One day throughout his first time period, Donald Trump summoned a prime aide to debate a brand new concept. “Trump known as me right down to the Oval Workplace,” John Bolton, nationwide safety adviser in 2018, informed the Guardian. “He mentioned a distinguished businessman had simply prompt the US purchase Greenland.”
It was a rare proposal. And it originated from a longtime pal of the president who would go on to accumulate enterprise pursuits within the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton discovered, was Ronald Lauder. Inheritor to a make-up fortune – the worldwide cosmetics model Estée Lauder – he had identified Trump, a fellow rich New Yorker, for greater than 60 years.
Bolton mentioned he mentioned the Greenland proposition with Lauder. After the billionaire’s intervention, a White Home workforce started to discover methods to extend US sway within the huge Arctic territory managed by Denmark.
Trump’s renewed pursuit of Lauder’s concept throughout his second time period is typical of how the president operates, Bolton mentioned. “Bits of knowledge that he hears from pals, he takes them as fact and you may’t shake his opinion.”
The proposal appears to have stirred Trump’s imperialist ambitions: eight years on, he’s mulling not simply shopping for Greenland however maybe taking it by power.
Like lots of these across the president, Lauder’s coverage options seem to intersect together with his enterprise pursuits. As Trump has ratcheted up his threats to grab Greenland, Lauder has acquired industrial holdings there. Lauder can also be a part of the consortium whose need to entry Ukrainian minerals seems to have spurred Trump to demand a share of the war-torn nation’s sources.
Lauder has mentioned he met Trump within the Sixties once they went to the identical prestigious enterprise college. After working for the household cosmetics enterprise, Lauder served beneath Ronald Reagan on the Pentagon, then as ambassador to Austria, earlier than working unsuccessfully for mayor of New York in 1989.
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When Trump received the presidency in 2016, Lauder donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory fundraising committee. When Trump’s sanity was questioned in 2018, Lauder known as him “a person of unbelievable perception and intelligence”.
That very same yr, Lauder said he was assisting Trump with “a few of the most complicated diplomatic challenges conceivable”. This appears to have included sowing the thought of Arctic enlargement. The next yr, the Wall Avenue Journal revealed Trump’s curiosity in Greenland. Denmark’s rulers expressed outrage. Trump responded by tweeting an image of a golden Trump Tower looming over a village, beside the caption: “I promise not to do that to Greenland!”
‘A treasure trove of rare-earth components’
Trump’s fixation with Greenland endured, as did Lauder’s. Final February, shortly after Trump returned to the White Home, Lauder leapt to his defence when the president publicly contemplated a army takeover of the world’s largest island.
“Trump’s Greenland idea was by no means absurd – it was strategic,” Lauder wrote within the New York Submit. He went on: “Beneath its ice and rock lies a treasure trove of rare-earth components important for AI, superior weaponry and trendy expertise. As ice recedes, new maritime routes are rising, reshaping international commerce and safety.”
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