President-elect Donald Trump expressed renewed interest Sunday in having the United States control the autonomous territory of Greenland, which is owned by Denmark.

“In the interests of national security and freedom around the world, the United States of America believes ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Trump wrote in a statement announcing that he was appointing Ken Howery as ambassador to Denmark had chosen.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede has already rejected Trump’s comments, saying in a statement: “Greenland is ours.” We are not for sale and will never be for sale. “We must not lose our long fight for freedom,” said Reuters.

Trump promised to purchase Greenland several times during his first term as president.

He told reporters in 2019 about the island: “Strategically it’s interesting and we would be interested, but we’ll talk to them a little bit.”

“First we have to find out whether they are interested or not,” he added. “They’re losing a tremendous amount of money, so we’ll see what happens.”

At that point, Denmark declared that Greenland was not for sale, prompting Trump to cancel a trip he had planned to the country. In a tweet, he said Denmark was “a very special country with incredible people, but due to Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments that she was not interested in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks.” ” another time.”

Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration, told MSNBC in 2020 that Trump asked him and other officials in 2018 whether the U.S. could trade Greenland for Puerto Rico because, in Trump’s words, “Puerto Rico was dirty and the people were poor.” He said the conversation took place before DHS officials traveled to Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, to assist in hurricane recovery to help Mary.

Greenland, located between the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, is technically part of North America and is the largest island in the world. While much of Greenland is covered by ice, about 57,000 people live there.

The U.S. has considered buying Greenland at least twice, including in 1867 and then in 1946, when President Harry S. Truman proposed buying it for $100 million. Denmark rejected the offer.