Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she believed US President Donald Trump was still “very serious” about taking control of the semi-autonomous territory of Greenland.
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A key diplomatic matter for Denmark, yet according to viral videos circulating across social media, Trump’s Greenland takeover plans also sparked hysterical laughter inside the Danish parliamentary chamber.
Clips captioned “Denmark’s Hilarious Response to Trump’s Greenland Proposal” and “Danish Parliament laughs at Trump’s Nobel demands over Greenland control” have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in recent weeks.
Yet in reality, while the footage is authentic, it has been misleadingly captioned and taken out of context.
By carrying out a reverse image search, The Cube, Euronews’ fact-checking team, found that the video dates back to 3 October 2019 — posted on the Danish parliament’s website, alongside a transcript of the parliamentary session.
Laughter erupted inside the chamber after Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was unable to hold back her giggles as she explained why the Danish state had decided to purchase a camel, alongside four circus elephants.
The purchase, which sparked controversy due to costing more than €1.5 million, was agreed upon following a state ban on wild animals in circuses, which was introduced in late 2019.
Frederiksen told the chamber that the government had been advised that it should buy the camel, named Ali, alongside the elephants because they were reportedly “best friends” and inseparable.
She detailed that it had later emerged that the animals were, in fact, not best friends.
“Unfortunately, Ali is not doing so well, and he wasn’t actually Ramboline’s [one of the elephants] best friend either, so it probably wasn’t such a good deal we made”, she said.
The Danish premier’s comments at the Munich Security conference on Saturday follow what had appeared to be a cooling of tensions between Denmark and the US administration, after an agreement around the future of Greenland was struck at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Although the specific details of the deal — hailed by Trump as a means for the US to gain “total access” to Greenland — remain vague, NATO agreed to up its strategic security presence in the Arctic.
