CNN chief data analyst Harry Enten recently broke down why President Donald Trump’s push to take over Greenland has got to be “one of the most unpopular ideas” he’s ever heard.
Enten, who appeared on “Anderson Cooper 360°” on Tuesday, turned to a recent Fox News poll that showed 70% of Americans who don’t agree that the U.S. should take control of Greenland compared to 26% of others who do.
“That is more Americans who were for the impeachment and removal of Richard Nixon by the end of his presidency. This is uniformly unpopular, even only half of Republicans support it,” Enten stressed.
Trump and Vice President JD Vance have emphasized this week that people living in the semi-autonomous Danish territory would be better off with America.
Trump, during Vance’s visit to Greenland on Friday, claimed that the U.S. needs the arctic territory for the sake of “international security” and “world peace.”
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen slammed the Trump administration earlier this week for its “unacceptable pressure” on Greenland.
“And it is a pressure that we will resist,” she said Tuesday.
Enten pointed to a January poll showing 85% of Greenland residents responded “no” when asked if the territory should become part of America. 6% of respondents, meanwhile, answered “yes” to the same question.
“To give you an idea of how low 6% is, if you took a poll of Americans and say, ‘Do you believe we actually landed on the moon?’ About 10% of Americans think we faked the moon landing,” Enten noted.
The U.S. has previously shown interest in Greenland.
Following World War II, U.S. officials under President Harry Truman sought an American military base on the island and offered to buy the territory due to “the extreme importance of Greenland to the defense of the United States,” the Associated Press reported.
The U.S. offered Denmark $100 million in gold at the time (about $1 billion today), a bid that Danish officials turned down. The countries instead signed a long-term agreement for the U.S. to have a military base on the island.
Only 33% of Americans were in favor of the purchase at the time while 38% disagreed with the potential buy, per a 1947 poll shared by Enten.
“I have never seen a single poll in which the yeses on us purchasing Greenland was higher than the no’s throughout American history,” Enten added.
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