President Donald Trump has found himself getting skewered by the Danish media after he abruptly canceled a planned meeting with the Danish prime minister after she refused to sell Greenland to the United States.
Copenhagen-based newspaper Berlingske on Wednesday published several articles and editorials that took Trump to task for snubbing an important European ally because it would not entertain selling him Greenland.
The paper's lead editorial, for example, declared Trump's cancellation "absurd" and said that he was deeply harming his country's relationship with Denmark.
"Trump's postponement of the official state visit indefinitely is in itself a completely unheard of step, a diplomatic insult and deeply ominous to the state throughout transatlantic cooperation," the editors write.
Columnist Jarl Cordua, meanwhile, describes Trump as a "questionable real estate agent with frayed morals" and said that Denmark must not allowed itself to be bullied by him.
"The US president apparently feels called to take Denmark's hospitality and respect for granted," he writes. "It is simply disrespectful to the extent that it must have consequences."
And a top news story in the paper quotes former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who says that it is probably good that Trump is cancelling his meeting because it in all likelihood would have wasted the country's time.
"The security and climate challenges around the Arctic are too important to be discussed at the same time as hopeless discussions such as the sale of Greenland," the former prime minister explains.
