According to viral social media posts, Trump’s plans to acquire Greenland triggered uproarious laughter within the Danish parliament. However, these clips have been incorrectly captioned.
During her address at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expressed the belief that US President Donald Trump remained «very serious» about assuming control over the semi-autonomous region of Greenland.
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As a critical diplomatic issue for Denmark, rumors and viral videos circulating on social media suggested that Trump’s Greenland acquisition proposal provoked uncontrollable laughter within Denmark’s parliamentary chamber.
Videos labeled «Denmark’s Hilarious Response to Trump’s Greenland Proposal» and «Danish Parliament laughs at Trump’s Nobel demands over Greenland control» have amassed hundreds of thousands of views over recent weeks.
Nonetheless, while the recordings are genuine, they have been misleadingly captioned and taken out of context.
By utilising reverse image search, The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking unit, traced the video back to 3 October 2019 — when it was uploaded on the Danish parliament’s website, along with a transcript of the session.
Laughter broke out in the chamber after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen struggled to suppress her laughter while recounting why the government had chosen to acquire a camel, as well as four circus elephants.
The acquisition, which stirred debate over its price exceeding €1.5 million, was authorized following a state ban on wild animals in circuses that took effect in late 2019.
Frederiksen explained to parliament that officials had advised purchasing the camel, named Ali, alongside the elephants because they were reportedly «best friends» and inseparable.
She further revealed that it turned out the animals were not, in fact, best friends.
«Unfortunately, Ali is not thriving, and he wasn’t actually Ramboline’s [one of the elephants] closest companion either, so the deal was probably not as good as we thought,» she remarked.
The Danish Prime Minister’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday come after a seeming easing of tensions between Denmark and the US administration, following an agreement concerning Greenland’s future at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Although specifics of the agreement — which Trump touted as enabling US «total access» to Greenland — remain unclear, NATO has consented to enhance its strategic security presence in the Arctic region.