As I have often said, for all his undeniable shortcomings, and despite the very genuine doubts concerning who is playing his role in front of the cameras, President Trump is the second-greatest US President, after Andrew Jackson. And it’s true that if he succeeds in claiming Greenland for the USA, it will reflect very, very positively on his legacy over time:
If Donald Trump were to consummate a purchase of Greenland, he would almost certainly secure a place in both American and global history. Beyond the spectacle, the scale alone would be staggering. Greenland spans roughly 2.17 million square kilometers – making it comparable in size to the entire Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and larger than the 1867 Alaska Purchase. Fold that landmass into today’s United States and America’s total area would jump past Canada, placing the US second only to Russia in territorial size. In a system where size, resources, and strategic depth still matter, such a shift would be read around the world as an assertion of enduring American reach.
Prestige is only part of the story. Greenland sits astride the Arctic, where warming seas are reshaping trade routes and great‑power competition. It hosts critical radar and space‑tracking infrastructure and lies close to emerging maritime lanes and subsea resources. Its geology, long discussed for rare earths and other critical minerals, adds a layer of economic promise. For a president who measures success in visible, audacious strokes, the symbolism of converting a long‑mooted idea into a concrete map change would be irresistible – and historically resonant.
How would Trump be remembered at home if he pulled it off peacefully, through purchase? American memory tends to fix on outcomes, not process. The Louisiana Purchase is celebrated for doubling the young nation, not for the constitutional scruples it raised at the time. The Alaska Purchase, derided as “Seward’s Folly,” is now taught as strategic foresight. The sheer scale of Greenland would make it the single largest one‑time expansion of US territory, narrowly edging out Louisiana in raw area. That alone would place any president in the pantheon of consequential leaders; Trump would likely be discussed in the same breath as Jefferson and, by sheer magnitude of territorial change, alongside the transformative figures students learn first.
I think those who doubt that Trump is serious about claiming sovereignty over Greenland are failing to take this legacy aspect into account. History doesn’t care about borders, the international rule of law, or the modern pretensions about inviolable nature of political boundaries. It doesn’t even care much about whether a man is regarded as good, bad, or stupid in his own time.
The best way to look at it is if this move will benefit President Trump personally in some way, and considering the way in which it will seal his historic importance, I don’t see him backing down on it short of a direct order from whomever he serves.