Jeff Landry Is Trump’s Envoy to Greenland. He Wants to Celebrate Gumbo.

The Washington Post

16:26 JST, January 31, 2026

After an eventful week in Davos, Switzerland – where President Donald Trump variously referred to Greenland as “our territory,” said he wouldn’t use force to acquire it, then announced a “framework of a future deal with respect to” the island – Trump spoke Saturday to his Greenland guy: Jeff Landry, Louisiana’s Republican governor, who has not been to Greenland.

“He said, ‘Jeff, you need to tell people how much I love the Greenlanders,’” Landry said Tuesday in an interview. “‘I love them. I want them to have opportunities. I want to make Greenland great again, as they want to make it – not necessarily in the eyes of Americans and what they would want, but in the eyes of the Greenlanders.’”

That could be a tough sell. Many Greenlandic leaders have bridled at Trump’s push to control the autonomous territory of roughly 57,000 residents, which is part of the kingdom of Denmark. And Landry already holds a fairly time-consuming job. (After his conversation with Trump over the weekend, he had to pivot to managing his state’s response to a deadly winter storm.) Trump named him special envoy to Greenland late last year. At the time, Landry called it “an honor” to help “make Greenland a part of the U.S.” At the same time, his specific role has not always been clear.

“Look, I think that the titles can somewhat be misleading,” he told The Washington Post. “I look at my job under this as almost like a representative of the United States and the state of Louisiana, to see what kind of economic opportunities there could be with trade in Greenland and Louisiana.”

So far, Landry’s job seems mostly confined to a handful of television and radio appearances, which he has used to hype the idea of Greenlanders and Americans – specifically, Louisianans – as natural pals who really ought to get to know one another.

“Everyone in Louisiana now wants to go to Greenland for summer – it gets real hot in Louisiana,” he said on “The Will Cain Show” in December.

“They tell me they like to hunt, they like to fish, they like to have a good time,” he told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade this month. “I’m like, ‘Y’all belong in Louisiana.’”

“We should go to Greenland and say, ‘Hey, what kind of opportunities would you like? What are we doing? What can we offer you that Europe is not?” he said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Kuno Fencker is the sort of Greenlander one could imagine receiving this type of outreach. He has stronger Washington connections than many of his colleagues in Greenland’s parliament. He traveled to D.C. to attend Trump’s inauguration last January – the plus-one of a MAGA friend – and scored an invite to Turning Point USA’s inaugural ball afterward. He’s also met Rep. Andrew Ogles and did a podcast with the Tennessee Republican to explain why Greenland is not for sale. And he knows Tom Dans, a Trump ally who had been cultivating Greenlandic support for joining America before the president appointed him to serve as chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission.

So, has Fencker heard from Landry? Has he heard from any other Greenlanders who’ve heard from him?

“No, not at all,” he said Jan. 15.

Nor had Per Berthelsen, another member of Greenland’s parliament. “I do not know [anything other] than what I have seen in the news,” Berthelsen said over email Jan. 14.

Has Aaja Chemnitz, a Greenlandic member of Danish Parliament, who also chairs the body’s Greenland committee, talked with Landry?

“No,” Chemnitz said Jan. 22.

As of last week, Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, hadn’t heard from Landry, either. Nor had Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), his Democratic counterpart. Nor Jesper Moller Sorensen, the Danish ambassador to the United States. Nor Jacob Isbosethsen, the Greenland representative to the United States and Canada. (“I’m not interested in going to an embassy and talking to diplomats,” Landry told Kilmeade.)

He told us he’s been in touch with some Greenlanders who have reached out over email.

“I haven’t gotten directly on the phone yet,” he explained in his thick Cajun accent. “There can be a language barrier, me and the U.S., let alone me and Greenlandic or Danish.”

Landry was an attorney, a businessman and a National Guard member before he started climbing the political ladder in Louisiana, culminating in his election as governor in 2023. Landry has shepherded a law that requires public schools to display the Ten Commandments and instituted one of the strictest abortion bans in the country; when the latter passed in 2022, the tough-talking then-attorney general told critics that “if you don’t like Louisiana, you can leave.” He has no foreign policy or diplomatic experience, but he is close to the president and key MAGA figures, such as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Donald Trump Jr., both of whom are regulars at Landry’s annual alligator hunt.

The Post asked the White House if anyone could say more about Landry’s role. Deputy press secretary Anna Kelly provided no clarity on that, but she did say in an emailed statement that Landry is doing a “fantastic job.” “Governor Landry is a strong asset to the world-class team that President Trump has put together to pursue long-term peace both at home and abroad,” Kelly added.

He wasn’t present for a Jan. 14 meeting at the White House with Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland – and wasn’t mentioned in the hour-long conversation, according to a source familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about what was discussed. But he did come to Washington the day after that meeting. He told The Post that he met with Rubio – “you know Marco, he’s such a happy warrior” – to discuss economic opportunities in Greenland, as well as the idea of a State Department-led delegation there in the near future: “The governor of Alaska, myself, someone from our sports fishing industries, just to go to Greenland and have a discussion,” he says. (The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

Greenland and Denmark have maintained a firm stance that Greenland’s sovereignty is nonnegotiable. Despite Trump’s talk of a “framework,” neither the Danish nor Greenlanders have agreed to any deal. Trump has promised further negotiation about the “Golden Dome” – a missile defense system – between Vance, Rubio, special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff “and various others, as needed.”

Landry may be a various other … assuming he is needed. The governor is still the president’s Greenland envoy, right?

“As far as I know, he hasn’t dismissed me,” Landry said.

In their latest conversation, Landry said the president told him he wanted Greenlanders to feel the love. “We want to further boost the security of them and the U.S., as well – that is his big message,” he said. “It’s important in multiple layers. He looks to have a great relationship with Greenland.”

Landry has said that he plans to win the hearts of Greenlanders with “culinary diplomacy,” which he defines as an opportunity for the seafood-loving Louisianans and Greenlanders to come together.

“They catch a lot of fish there,” he said. “Maybe we can teach them how to make a Greenland version of gumbo.”

Under these circumstances, that might not do the trick, says Rufus Gifford, who served as ambassador to Denmark under President Barack Obama.

“You think gumbo is going to want to make them be purchased?” Gifford said. “You’re in for a rude awakening.”

Shortly after Trump named Landry as special envoy, a former politician from North Greenland who now owns a dogsled tourism company invited Landry to attend the Avannaata Qimussersua, the country’s national dogsled race and premier annual cultural event. This did not go over well with the chairman of the Greenland Dogsledding Association, who said it was “unacceptable that political pressure is being exerted from outside” and that Landry’s attendance would be “wholly inappropriate.”

On Jan. 17, the race’s organizing body announced that “the tourism company that invited Governor Jeff Landry from the United States has unilaterally withdrawn its invitation.”

Landry seemed undeterred, if a bit dismayed.

“I would never try to un-invite someone from Greenland who wanted to go to the Super Bowl,” he said. “But I’m hoping as things progress, maybe there will be a thawing of the ice – pun intended.”

He added that he’s been invited on “another expedition” by a Greenlander but declined to share additional details. “It seems like anytime we say something, someone over there puts pressure on them,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s the Danes. I’d be sorely disappointed.”

There’s the what of Landry’s role in the Greenland saga – and then there’s the why. The why might have something to do with the Louisiana Purchase. Thomas Jefferson bought 828,000 square miles from the French in 1803. Trump wants to buy 836,000 square miles from the Danish in 2026. Landry didn’t have anything to do with the Louisiana Purchase, as far as we know, but merely being the Louisiana governor with Cajun ancestry is part of why he ended up with this position, according to someone close to Landry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about conversations with the White House.

It’s a connection Landry himself draws. “The Cajuns in Louisiana have lived under multiple governing nations, and we ended up with the U.S., which has been great for us,” he said. “The Louisiana Purchase was great for us because it’s one of those that helped give us a great expansion.”

What Landry says about the Cajuns is, in fact, true, says Peter Kastor, a professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, who wrote a book about the Louisiana Purchase. At the time of the sale, the region’s White, French-speaking population had been living in colonial neglect. Once under U.S. rule, the Cajuns were made U.S. citizens without having to relinquish their language, religion or legal system, a favor from a federal government eager to build loyalty in its fledgling territory.

Other than that, there’s no real comparison between the current Greenland situation and the Louisiana Purchase, according to Kastor. France, crucially, actually wanted to sell the territory after its visions for an empire in the Western Hemisphere crumbled. The United States really wanted only to buy the port of New Orleans, to stave off a trade crisis along the Mississippi River. Sure, the French said – as long as the U.S. bought all of France’s remaining North American holdings with it.

And, perhaps more to the point: “The Louisiana Purchase happened when empires bought and sold land on a regular basis without consent of the people,” Kastor says. “In the 20th century, people rejected that.” As do many Greenlandic officials today, who have repeatedly said their nation is “not for sale.”

There is at least one Greenlander, however, who is eager for Landry’s attention. Jorgen Boassen, a bricklayer in Nuuk, met with Trump Jr. and Charlie Kirk when the pair visited Greenland last January, and he was the one who brought his friend Fencker, the member of parliament, to D.C. for Trump’s inauguration. He’s befriended Dans, with whom he co-founded an organization dedicated to bringing Greenland under American jurisdiction.

“I am very happy for Trump’s interest in Greenland,” Boassen says.

He hopes he gets a chance to meet with Landry soon and hopes the governor hasn’t been dissuaded from all of the negative feedback from his fellow countrymen. “Travel to Greenland,” Boassen says, “and see what the Greenlanders do.”

For now, effort on the “framework of a deal” continues. Senior officials from Denmark, Greenland and the U.S. met Wednesday “to discuss how we can address U.S. concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the [Danish] Kingdom,” according to a spokesperson for the Danish embassy. Landry was in Washington, but not at the Greenland meeting. The governor was meeting with officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, his spokesperson said – working on relief from the ice storm, for his other job.