COPENHAGEN, Denmark — On a cold, foggy afternoon in downtown Copenhagen, military veteran Flemming Almind joined thousands of his fellow Danes in what he said was the first protest he’s ever participated in, opposing the Trump administration’s push to acquire Greenland.
“I’ve actually never done this before, demonstrating, but this is very important to me,” Almind, 57, told NBC News. He said he had been following developments and felt “I need to do something.”
An estimated 10,000 Danes gathered in the city hall square Saturday afternoon to express their frustration with President Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
The crowd, which included parents with small children as well as older Danes, wore hats in the style of Trump’s MAGA caps but scrawled with “Make America Go Away,” and waved Greenlandic flags and signs saying, “Hands off Greenland.”
“We have to support Greenland,” said protester Susanne Kristensen. “We are Danes, Greenland are Danes, even though they’re Greenlanders, and we just have to stick together.”
Some protesters expressed fears that if they spoke out about Trump in the press or on social media, his administration could bar them from visiting the United States while he was in office. “I won’t go there until he’s out,” Kristensen said.
The protest came just before Trump announced fresh tariffs on Denmark and its allies, a step that has infuriated European leaders and threatens to reignite a trade war that was meant to have been settled with a deal signed by Trump months ago.
A bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation, intending to express solidarity with the country in the face of Trump’s rhetoric, was meanwhile wrapping up a visit to the Danish capital, where it met with the Danish prime minister and key Danish and Greenlandic officials.
The visit by the group of 10 American lawmakers from both the House and Senate has not gone unnoticed, with the protesters saying they were closely following the developments. “It makes a huge difference that Congress members come here and listen,” Kristime Due, who was attending the protest in Copenhagen, told NBC News.
The delegation’s visit was arranged on short notice and has played an almost counterprogramming role to the statements the Trump administration has been making. Trump’s desire to own a part of the Danish kingdom is all over the airwaves in Danish news broadcasts, and Danes say it’s a constant conversation.
“This is a respectful and constructive delegation that came more to listen than to talk,” Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., told reporters on Saturday.
“One thing that’s been made clear to us is that the people of Denmark are very anxious, are quite concerned, and the people of Greenland even more so,” Coons said, adding that the current tone of statements from the White House is “not constructive.”
Coons said the delegation is “having active conversations amongst ourselves about what is the wisest course of action” to de-escalate the rhetoric when they return to Washington, but some members of the delegation do not want to rush into a hasty symbolic vote that could fall along party lines.
“I worry that going to a specific legislative vehicle right now today is premature,” Coons said.
“We cannot allow this to become a partisan matter. We simply cannot,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. “I think the way that we keep it from being partisan is by full education, dismissing some of the assumptions that some may have and then acting together,” she added.
The members of Congress met with members of the Danish Parliament on Friday, with the Social Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesman, Flemming Møller Mortensen, describing the discussion as “fruitful” and “intense.”
“We feel frightened,” Mortensen said. “Especially the people living in Greenland, both adults but also youngsters and kids, and that was also a part of what their Greenlandic colleagues [were] expressing today.”
Aaja Chemnitz, who is one of two Greenlandic representatives in the Danish Parliament, said that the “uncertainty is really taking a toll” on her people.
“Greenland is not for sale,” Chemnitz said. “So what is on the table for the U.S. side right now is not interesting for us, and you can’t buy a country.”
Pipaluk Lynge, a member of the Greenlandic Parliament, traveled to Copenhagen to participate in the meeting.
“It was really important for us to tell them from our own voice, because we know how it is back home,” Lynge said. “The children are worried, the adults are not sleeping.”
Both sides stressed Denmark’s willingness for more U.S. military presence in Greenland.
The U.S. has one military base in the Arctic territory, which has formed a core part of missile early-warning systems dating back to the Cold War. The base, which houses a small number of troops compared to thousands at its peak, was transferred to the U.S. Space Force in 2019, during the first Trump administration.
While the Trump administration’s push to take Greenland has started to fray the decades-old alliance between the U.S. and Denmark, some are concerned about the broader impact on NATO if it moves to seize an ally’s territory.
“If the United States were to carry out any of the current threats against Greenland, it would sever NATO,” Coons told NBC News in an interview. “We don’t want to do that.”
The Danes are keenly aware of how the alliance between the two countries has seen sacrifices in the past.
“In Afghanistan and Iraq, Danes were actually serving alongside the American soldiers, and Denmark lost, per capita, a lot of soldiers,” Almind, the military veteran, said at the protest in Copenhagen. “Looking back, you have to ask yourself, was it all worth it?”
While Danes are hopeful that the U.S. delegation’s support will resonate once they return to Washington, some are skeptical they can convince the president to change his mind when he seems determined to acquire Greenland at any cost.
Danish protester Else Hatmann said the delegation contained “only two [Republicans] who Trump don’t even listen to.”
Murkowski, a frequent holdout who Trump earlier this month said “should never be elected to office again,” pushed back against that sentiment, saying, “I don’t think that the absence of Republicans is because they don’t care about this issue.”
The other Republican on the trip, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has become an outspoken critic of Trump since he announced he would not run for re-election, but avoided interacting with reporters during the press events the delegation held.
