WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the Trump administration is engaged in “pretty aggressive rhetoric” about possibly seizing Greenland, which she says would be a “colossal mistake.”
“It would end NATO,” she said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It would be a gift to Russia and China and all autocratic nations who lust after new territory and want it to justify their own provocations.”
Murkowski said later that she was still having trouble “wrapping my head around” why President Trump and the White House are threatening to take Greenland.
Trump told reporters, shortly after launching a military operation on Venezuela, that taking Greenland is a national security priority. Then White House advisor Stephen Miller said the U.S. could seize the territory if it wanted to and no foreign military would challenge it. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not rule out using military force.
“All options are always on the table for President Trump as he examines what's in the best interest of the United States," she said Wednesday, adding that his first option is diplomacy.
Trump’s Greenland stance presents Republicans in Congress with a dilemma they’ve faced often in the Trump years: Should they take him literally, seriously or can they ignore it and it will go away? Murkowski is among a small number of Senate Republicans who felt it was worthwhile to cross Trump and condemn the White House threats. Another is Sen. Thom Tillis, R-S.C., who is retiring from the Senate.
Murkowski said in an interview after her floor speech that she doesn’t think Trump would actually send troops to take Greenland. Still, she said, the threat has impact.
“When you have words that are truly unsettling like that, there's plenty of room for suspicion and concern and anxiety and worry,” she said, “by the people of Greenland, the people of Denmark, and quite honestly, the people of this country and around the world, our European allies.”
Sen. Dan Sullivan, who has often spoken of America’s alliances as one “one of our great strategic advantages in the world,” did not respond to interview requests.
His office responded to inquiries by sending an op-ed Sullivan wrote last year that’s headlined Greenland’s nice but Alaska is better. It did not address the administration’s recent threats.
