After the White House cut off military aid to Ukraine, Donald Trump’s top officials scrambled to get it restored but were unable to organise a meeting with the president, in part because his staff were too busy pursuing his interest in buying Greenland, according to newly released congressional testimony.

The acting US ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, told Congress that Trump’s order in mid-July to cut off security assistance triggered a series of high-level meetings with cabinet members on how to get it resumed, given the urgency of the Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

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On 20 August, Trump cancelled a trip to Denmark on the grounds that the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, had “no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland”. Frederiksen had called the US president’s proposal to purchase the semi-autonomous Danish territory “an absurd discussion”.

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Taylor’s remarks suggest Trump’s Greenland purchase idea consumed considerable resources at the NSC, at the expense of other issues which the rest of his administration considered national security priorities.

Taylor has testified that it eventually became clear to him that Trump, through his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, was withholding the security assistance as a form of leverage to convince the Ukrainian government to investigate the president’s political rivals.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-buy-greenland