Political scientist David Karol says the Greenland agreement seems largely a rebranding of the status quo
Associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, posting on his own Bluesky account
“This seems to be largely a rebranding of the status quo to claim a win, much like Trump's first term USMCA replacing "Worst Trade Deal Ever" NAFTA he threatened to withdraw from with an only slightly updated agreement. Denmark always said the US could increase the military presence.”
Source and context
Original post
About this source
The speaker's own post, read on 2026-09-19 through Bluesky's public API (getPostThread: createdAt 2026-09-18T21:42:23.719Z, indexedAt 21:42:24.060Z, DID did:plc:xl4emyddd5ci6gxa3x5c65dn) and on the public bsky.app page, and compared character for character with the quotation. The post quotes journalist Aaron Rupar's post of 5:22 p.m. ET (bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mvt42eegvc27), whose image is a screenshot of Trump's Truth Social announcement. No archive copy was made in this research pass.
Original text
About this source
Read in full on the trumpstruth.org archive mirror, which shows the full text, the original post date (Friday, September 18, 2026, 05:18 pm EDT), the Truth Social status ID and the original URL https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/117294126158197822; truthsocial.com itself is Cloudflare-blocked and was not opened. The post says the United States “has entered into an Agreement,” whereas the Danish and Greenlandic release describes an expected agreement still to be signed. The identical text was posted on Trump’s X account (separate source). This page was captured by the mirror on September 19, 2026 at 11:51 AM EDT; the mirror’s later Truth Social entries through 12:52 PM EDT that day, including the transcript of a 1:06 AM video, do not mention Greenland.
Reporting
About this source
News report used only for the state of the record: no text of the agreement had been released, and Denmark and Greenland said in a joint statement that the three governments were expected to sign at the UN General Assembly the following week, subject to the necessary parliamentary procedures. Read 2026-09-19 at about 9:40 a.m. ET. NBC News (published 2026-09-18 22:37 UTC, modified 2026-09-19 08:15 UTC) also says the full text had not been released. The Danish Prime Minister's Office release of 2026-09-18 (english.stm.dk) carries the joint statement.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
At 5:18 p.m. ET on September 18, 2026, President Trump announced on Truth Social an agreement with Denmark and Greenland that, in his words, "gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland." Journalist Aaron Rupar posted an image of the announcement on Bluesky at 5:22 p.m. ET, and Karol quoted that post. The agreement had not been signed and its text had not been published.
After the quotation
Denmark and Greenland said in a joint statement that the three governments were expected to sign the agreement at the UN General Assembly the following week and that it would then need to pass the necessary parliamentary procedures. As of September 19, BBC reported that no text of the agreement had been released.
How this statement is classified
Case context: Trump’s “permanent control” description of the announced U.S.-Denmark-Greenland security agreement
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case's fixed reference point is President Trump's description, in his September 18 Truth Social post, of the unsigned and unpublished U.S.-Denmark-Greenland agreement as giving the United States permanent control over security and all other needs in Greenland. Karol says the agreement "seems to be largely a rebranding of the status quo to claim a win" and that Denmark "always said the US could increase the military presence," disputing that the deal is the new arrangement Trump describes without saying whether the agreement itself is good or bad. The closest competing label is condemns, because "to claim a win" attributes a motive to Trump's presentation. That loses because the criticism is confined to how the deal is labeled and presented; the post does not criticize the agreement's terms, and its main move is to dispute what the deal is.
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- People and groups discussed
- Donald Trump
Trump’s “permanent control” description of the announced U.S.-Denmark-Greenland security agreement
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
More from this case
Read the full case“I'm looking forward to the ink being dry on the new agreement with the USA. And to us being able to see the content. Until then, I'm skeptical. I don't have much confidence in Trump.”Read statement
“We will have to wait with that until the agreement is published next week. So I don't have many comments on that.”Read statement
“Next week could be a good week… For Greenland, Denmark and the USA alike. Where a long period of uncertainty is hopefully replaced by a binding agreement that strengthens security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic and thus also our shared security in NATO and Europe - with respect for the Kingdom's red lines.”Read statement