For Totally Unknown Reasons, No One in Greenland Wants to Meet Usha & JD Vance

Per the White House, Usha would visit Nuuk, its varying historic sites, and attend the Avannaata Qimussersu dogsled race in Sisimiut. But over the last several days, plans changed drastically: Now, Usha will only be visiting a U.S. military base at Nuuk. The trip has decreased from three days to just one. And instead of a solo trip, she’ll be joined by Vice President JD Vance. According to Danish media, the White House changed its initial plans when it became clear no one wanted to meet Usha. Per Jesper Steinmetz, a correspondent for Danish channel TV 2, White House representatives went “knocking on one door after another” over the last week, trying to find someone, anyone, who would like to personally meet Usha. “Everywhere, the answer was the same: no thank you,” Steinmetz said.

I can’t imagine anyone was more, rather than less, inclined to meet with Usha amid news of who her plus one would be—that is, the most disliked vice president in U.S. history. On Tuesday, Vance announced his plans to accompany his wife  because he “didn’t want her to have all that fun by herself.” What seems more likely to be the case, of course, is that the trip was quickly shaping up to be a disaster with no one outside of an American military base vaguely interested in being used by Usha as a photo op in service of this administration’s immature, strongman fantasy of conquering Greenland. And because Usha is a woman, of course, how could she be sent to a military base on her lonesome?? So, White House officials clearly pulled Vance away from his hectic schedule of arguing with people on Twitter and texting “What?” on non-secure war plan chats to ship him off for a bizarre weekend photo op with his wife.

Embarrassingly, even with Vance in attendance, still, all the White House can pull together is a visit to an American military base for a briefing on supposed security issues. The government of Greenland itself said in a statement on Monday that it had “not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official.” The travel agency Tupilak Travel initially agreed to meet with Usha, but revoked this, with the agency’s manager explaining in a statement this week that he feared “it would turn out to be a MAGA event [which] we did not want to be part of.” You don’t say!

“There are probably some people in the U.S. who have started to catch on that the narrative about a Greenlandic population standing with open arms and having a fierce ambition to become Americans is a false narrative—and that is a good thing,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told reporters on Thursday. “So instead, you visit your own military installation in Greenland to get a briefing and I hope it will be a good briefing.” Much like Greenland’s climate, Rasmussen’s comments were ice cold.