Rand Paul Warns Trump’s Greenland Plan Is Backfiring: You Don’t Win Them Over By ‘Denigrating’ Their Citizens

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is not a fan of President Donald Trump’s approach to acquiring Greenland — with Paul telling ABC on Sunday that Trump is not going to win support from Greenlanders by “angering and denigrating” them with his comments.

Paul was asked about the president’s Greenland game plan by Martha Raddatz during an interview on This Week.

Raddatz noted Paul said last week he would “do everything in [his] power” to stop a military takeover of Greenland, before asking “Do you actually think he would use military force or…  are we overreacting to that?”

“I would hope not,” Paul said.

Paul then said he felt Trump’s comments were making it harder to buy it, too:

But let’s say you wanted to buy Greenland — and I’m not disputing that that might be something we might want, to buy Greenland. You don’t get there by angering and denigrating the people who live there and saying, “We’re going to march the Marines in and take if you don’t sell it to us.” It doesn’t make them very willing to sell to us.

So really, if your goal is somehow we’re going to rattle the saber and then they’re going to sell it to us, I think it’s having the opposite effect. I think you’d be hard-pressed to find someone in Greenland for it, but you’d also be hard-pressed to find somebody in Washington who’s for a military invasion on either side of the aisle.

The White House told Reuters last week that it was keeping all of its options open to acquire Greenland from Denmark, including military intervention.

“President Trump has made it well known that acquiring Greenland is a national security priority of the United States, and it’s vital to deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” the White House said in its statement. “The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.”

Paul told Raddatz he disapproved of those comments from the Trump administration. He said Greenland is like Venezuela and Colombia — that Congress should ultimately decide whether the military is used, not the commander-in-chief.

“It’s about whether or not the people get a say in whether we go to war,” Paul added.

Watch above.