SPECIAL REPORT - Trump's Bully Move on Greenland Didn't Stop. It Just Changed Shape.
He couldn't buy it. He backed off invading it. So his circle is drilling it - without asking - and two Canadian companies are quietly part of how.
Dear reader,
Start with the man himself, because without him there’s no story here at all.
Trump has wanted Greenland since 2019, when he called buying it “essentially a real estate deal.” After his reelection, the ask became a threat. By January 2026 he was telling reporters “I think it will happen.” He ordered the Joint Special Operations Command to draw up a plan to invade - over objections from his own Joint Chiefs of Staff. A quarter of Nuuk turned out to protest. Denmark, a NATO ally, warned that force against Greenland could end the alliance outright. Then, at Davos on January 21, Trump reversed himself in public: no invasion, no tariffs.
He never said he’d stop wanting it. And two days after Greenland’s government caught his circle breaking the rules to get it anyway, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself looming over a Greenlandic village on Truth Social. Caption: “Hello, Greenland.”
Here’s what didn’t stop when Trump backed off in public: a Texas oil company, chaired by a man reported to have access to his inner circle, moved drilling equipment onto Greenlandic soil this summer without the approval the country’s own government says was required. On July 30, Greenland’s Ministry of Trade and Mineral Resources issued a “strong warning” over exactly that. The company’s chairman, Larry Swets Jr., insists the project has “nothing to do with” annexation - and responded to reporting on his Trump ties by accusing the press of trying to “manufacture a Trump controversy while burying the facts.”
None of that equipment gets to Greenland on its own. Right now, two ordinary Canadian companies are quietly part of how it’s getting there - and Canada spent this past February telling Trump, on the record, to keep his hands off Greenland’s sovereignty.
[PAYWALL - what’s behind it:]
- What a retired NORAD ops director says the equipment placement is actually designed to signal to Greenland - the exact playbook, in his own words
- The two Canadian companies by name, what they’re supplying, and why Ottawa almost certainly can’t stop them even if it wanted to
- Why Canada’s own February flag-raising in Nuuk makes September look so different - and the investor number that doesn’t match what independent geologists say the prize is actually worth
