Donald Trump’s repeated interest in Greenland did not come out of thin air. The idea, first raised during his first term, came from a longtime friend and billionaire businessman, Ronald Lauder. Years later, that suggestion has turned into a serious geopolitical issue with Trump openly threatening to take Greenland— the nice way or the more difficult way, even if it means angering NATO allies. The roots of the proposal go back to 2018, when Trump was president for the first time.
Who is Ronald Lauder?
Ronald Lauder is the youngest son of Estée Lauder, founder of the global beauty brand. Now 81, he has a net worth of around $5 billion, according to Forbes, and has spent decades moving between business, politics and diplomacy.
Lauder and Trump both attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in the 1960s, with Lauder graduating in 1965 and Trump in 1968. As two of Manhattan’s most prominent heirs, Lauder and Trump moved in the same social and political circles for decades. Lauder even ran for New York City mayor in 1989, losing the Republican primary to Rudy Giuliani.
He served in the Reagan administration at the Pentagon, later became the US ambassador to Austria, and has been president of the World Jewish Congress. He is also a major Trump donor and informal adviser on foreign policy issues, including Israel. Lauder also served as deputy assistant secretary of defence for NATO affairs from 1983 to 1986.
When Trump won the presidency in 2016, Lauder donated $100,000 to Trump’s Victory fundraising committee. In 2018, when Trump’s mental fitness was being questioned, Lauder stepped out to defend him, calling him “a man of incredible insight and intelligence”. That same year, Lauder said he was helping Trump with “some of the most complex diplomatic challenges imaginable”.
Trump’s Greenland obsession and the businessman behind it
Former national security adviser John Bolton, speaking to The Guardian, recalled being summoned to the Oval Office one day to discuss an extraordinary proposal. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” Bolton told The Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
That businessman, Bolton later got to know, was Ronald Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire and a friend of Trump for more than six decades. The two men met in the 1960s and moved in the same elite New York business circles for years. After Lauder raised the idea, Bolton said, a White House team quietly began exploring ways to increase American influence over Greenland, an Arctic territory controlled by Denmark.
Bolton believes Trump took Lauder’s suggestion at face value and never let it go. “Bits of information that he hears from friends, he takes them as truth, and you can’t shake his opinion,” Bolton told the Guardian.
Trump’s interest in Greenland surfaced publicly in 2019, when reports revealed he had discussed buying the island. Eight years on, Trump is no longer just talking about buying Greenland. He has openly floated the possibility of taking it by force.
According to the Guardian, Lauder has invested heavily in Greenland in recent years. Danish corporate records show that a company with a New York address and unnamed owners has acquired stakes in several Greenland ventures. A Greenlandic businessman involved in one venture told a Danish newspaper that Lauder and his investor group had “a very good understanding of and access to the luxury market”. He never publicly commented on the same.
Over time, Lauder has argued that Trump’s Greenland idea is strategic, not absurd. “Trump’s Greenland concept was never absurd – it was strategic,” Lauder wrote in the New York Post last year. “With Greenland at the epicentre of great-power competition,” Lauder wrote, the US should pursue a “strategic partnership”. He added that he had worked closely with Greenland’s business and government leaders for years to develop investments there.