A sitting senator proposed annexing Greenland on the wild assumption that Denmark may, in the coming decades, become an Islamic theocracy.
Republican Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri appeared Thursday on The Charlie Kirk Show, where he supported President Donald Trump’s ongoing ambitions to take over Greenland. The subject shot back into the news cycle this month when the president reiterated that he believes the Danish territory “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark” while at the NATO summit.
Among the reasons Schmitt gave for backing Trump’s pipe dream: “I don’t know what Denmark’s government looks like in 50 years. It could be run by a bunch of radical mullahs or something, I don’t really know.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt says he supports annexing Greenland because Denmark might be run by “radical mullahs” in 50 years pic.twitter.com/bRgKjtmNvl
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 16, 2026
The prediction exemplifies just how commonplace wingnuttery has become among even the Republican Party’s most prominent and powerful members.
Schmitt may have cribbed the theory from crank conservative commentator Glenn Beck, who expressed support for U.S. control of Greenland earlier this year because, by his lights, Europe is on course to become “a nuclear-armed Islamic caliphate in 10 years,” in which “Denmark’s not Denmark anymore.”
