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Trump praises Danish PM in backtrack after ‘nasty’ remark over Greenland

US president Donald Trump heaped praise on Denmark's prime minister Friday, two days after he cancelled his state visit to the country and slammed her for dismissing his idea of buying Greenland as absurd.

Published: 24 August 2019 07:11 CEST

Trump praises Danish PM in backtrack after 'nasty' remark over Greenland

Photo: Nicholas Kamm Tobias Schwarz/AFP/Ritzau Scanpix

The US leader said he got a call from Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who he had previously called “nasty” when she rejected his idea of buying Greenland in the latest spat involving Trump and a traditional US ally.

But on Friday he appeared to reverse course, calling her “a wonderful woman.”

“We had a great conversation,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to leave for the G7 summit in France.

“We have a very good relationship with Denmark, and we agreed to speak later. But she was very nice. She put a call in, and I appreciated it very much,” Trump said.

The row had earlier prompted Trump to call off plans to visit Copenhagen next month after Frederiksen said Greenland, an autonomous region of Denmark, was not for sale.

Frederiksen said she was both disappointed and surprised that Trump cancelled the visit.

But, she added, “Denmark and the US are not in crisis, the US is one of our closest allies” and the invitation to visit was still open.

In his remarks late Friday Trump said nothing about resurrecting the trip.

READ ALSO: Danish politician goes viral with video offering Trump 'great deal' on windmills

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Denmark's government said on Tuesday it could not recover text messages requested by an official commission in relation to an ongoing inquiry. The timing, hours after local elections, was strongly criticised by opposition lawmakers.

Denmark's government said on Tuesday it could not recover text messages requested by an official commission in relation to an ongoing inquiry. The timing, hours after local elections, was strongly criticised by opposition lawmakers. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

As such, an official inquiry currently scrutinising the decision last year to cull millions of fur farm mink will not have insight into key government communication relating to the controversial decision.

The PM has faced questions over a policy to automatically delete texts after 30 days, a practice not universally applied across government ministries.

“It has only been possible for police technicians to recreate a limited amount of SMS messages from the devices of justice ministry heads of department,” justice minister Nick Hækkerup said in the statement.

READ ALSO: Why are Danish PM Frederiksen’s deleted mink texts causing controversy?

The timing of the announcement, less than 24 hours after local elections, drew immediate criticism from opposition parties.

The Ministry of Justice received the material needed for analysis of the devices on Friday last week, news wire Ritzau reports.

Justice spokesperson Morten Dahlin of the opposition Liberal party said it was “easy to assume” that the government held back the announcement to avoid a negative impact for the Social Democrats in local elections.

READ ALSO: How damaging is local election result for Danish PM Frederiksen?

“It’s foul play not to go public with this information when it was received, but instead choose to keep it back. And you can only speculate about whether this is because the information wasn’t allowed to come out before the municipal elections,” Dahlin said.

The Liberal representative stressed that his party has “no confidence” in the government’s response to the controversy over the mink texts.

Hækkerup rejected the suggestion by the Liberals that the government had deliberately withheld information until after the election.

“That is simply not true. The process was that we in the Ministry of Justice received the material in sealed envelopes on Friday. We agreed on Monday with the Mink Commission [official inquiry, ed.] that we should meet with the commission and its assistants which was to have the material and review it with their clients. So it’s a process that was agreed with the Mink Commission,” Hækkerup said.

The minister’s comment was in turn rejected by his opposition counterpart.

“The explanation that the information was stored in sealed envelopes, which were coincidentally not opened before the municipal elections, is ridiculous,” Dahlin said.

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