Danish politicians have reacted with fury after Donald Trump postponed a two-day visit to Denmark after its prime minister said she was not interested in selling him Greenland.

Parliamentarians and former ministers slammed the president’s behaviour as juvenile, undiplomatic and insulting, though the government itself has yet to comment on the cancellation of the visit, scheduled for early September.

“It’s an insult from a close friend and ally,” said Michael Aastrup Jensen, a member of the Danish parliament with the centre-right Venstre party.

He told the ‘Washington Post’ that Mr Trump’s interest in purchasing Greenland was initially widely considered to be a joke, before Danes realised the full extent of “this disaster”.

Mr Jensen said Danish politicians felt misled and “appalled” by the president, who “lacks even basic diplomatic skills”, he said.

“There was no word [ahead of time] about: ‘I want to buy Greenland and that’s why I’m coming.'”

On Twitter, Denmark’s former business minister, Rasmus Jarlov, wrote: “For no reason Trump assumes that (an autonomous) part of our country is for sale. Then insultingly cancels visit that everybody was preparing for.”

“Please show more respect,” he added.

Mr Trump announced the postponement of his visit via Twitter on Tuesday night, writing that Denmark is “a very special country with incredible people”, but adding that he had postponed his meeting with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen after she said “that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland”.

“The Prime Minister was able to save a great deal of expense and effort for both the United States and Denmark by being so direct,” Mr Trump wrote. “I thank her for that and look forward to rescheduling sometime in the future!”

The announcement came two days after Mr Trump told reporters that owning Greenland “would be nice” for the US strategically.

Though the status of the self-governing territory was not cited as a scheduled topic during his visit to Denmark, the postponement of that trip over resistance to his acquisition plans now suggests that it was Mr Trump’s central focus in the first place.

Danish officials had rushed to organise the presidential visit, which was announced on short notice.

A spokeswoman for the royal palace said yesterday the delay was “a surprise”.

Mr Jensen was more explicit, calling the move “an insult to the royal house”.

Other politicians questioned if the president was still welcome in the country.

Mr Trump’s behaviour was like that of “a spoiled child”, Søren Espersen, foreign affairs spokesman for the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party, told newspaper ‘Politiken’.

“Trump lives on another planet. Self-sufficient and disrespectful,” wrote Pernille Skipper, a left-wing Danish politician, on Twitter.

Martin Lidegaard, the chairman of the Danish parliament’s foreign policy committee and former foreign minister, told the ‘Washington Post’ that he hoped Danes would not take this “quite absurd” episode too seriously.

“Understandably, a lot of people are angry,” he said, “but we should not let Trump impact Danish-US relations” in a negative way.

“We’ve been close US allies for decades,” he said.

Danes have long considered themselves to have a particularly close relationship with the United States.

Denmark actively supported the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It has also closely collaborated with the US in the Arctic, which has been a growing focus of the White House since Barack Obama.

After the Cold War, the Arctic lost some of its strategic significance.

But climate change and the associated melting of the region’s ice cover are making natural resources more exploitable – and turning the Arctic into a region with growing economic and military importance to Russia, China and the United States. (© Washington Post)

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