American officials went door to door in Greenland’s capital looking for residents who would welcome a visit from Usha Vance during her upcoming trip—and every single one of them said no, according to a Danish TV report.
The second lady and her husband, Vice President JD Vance, are headed to Greenland on Friday to visit Pituffik Space Base, but they will follow a pared-back itinerary after Usha Vance’s original plans to meet with locals and attend a world-famous dogsled race were met with widespread condemnation.
With President Donald Trump increasingly calling for Greenland to come under U.S. control, officials couldn’t find anybody in Nuuk who was interested in Vance’s visit, despite a week of canvassing, according to Danish reporter Jesper Steinmetz.
“The Americans’ charm offensive has failed,” he said during a TV2 broadcast, as reported by The Hill. “They have finally understood what the Greenlanders here in town have been trying to tell them for a little over a week: We don’t want visitors right now.”
A White House official told The Hill the report was “categorically false.”
“The Second Lady is proud to visit the Pituffik Space Base with her husband to learn more about arctic security and the great work of the Space Base,” the official said.
Originally, Usha Vance had planned to travel with National Securtiy Adviser Mike Schultz and one of her sons to “visit historical sites, learn about Greenlandic heritage, and attend the Avannaata Qimussersu, Greenland’s national dogsled race,” the White House announced Sunday.
The news was met with condemnation from officials in Greenland and Denmark—the former being an autonomous region of the latter—but on Tuesday, her husband said he would be joining her.
“There was so much excitement around Usha’s visit to Greenland this Friday, that I decided that I didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself, and so I’m going to join her,” JD Vance said Tuesday in a video posted to X.
His announcement came just one day after a bombshell report that Trump administration officials—including Vance and Waltz—had coordinated a military strike on Yemen via an unsecured group chat on the commercial messaging app Signal.
As the fallout continued this week, it wasn’t clear if Waltz still planned to accompany the Vances to Greenland.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute B Egede had said Waltz’s presence in particular was “aggressive,” while Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen accused the U.S. of putting “unacceptable pressure” on Denmark and Greenland.
“What is the US national security adviser doing in Greenland? The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us,” Egede told local media, according to The Telegraph.
The locals apparently agreed, as a tourism business that had originally agreed to host Usha Vance rescinded its invitation on Wednesday over the group’s “underlying agenda.”
Describing all the doors U.S. officials had knocked on in vain, the Danish reporter Steinmetz said, “They’ve gotten no, no, no, no, no, every single time.”
