Trump wants Greenlanders to join the US. His comments are making that harder.

President Donald Trump and his top aides' preferred path to the U.S. taking ownership of Greenland is incentivizing people there to vote in a referendum to align with the United States, according to two people familiar with his thinking and granted anonymity to speak candidly.

But his bombast about needing to own the island for "psychological" reasons and refusal to rule out a military strike to seize land belonging to Denmark, a NATO ally, appears to be undermining that objective.

"All we want is to be treated with respect. But the way they talk about us, about buying Greenland over our heads, that is not respectful," Bebiane Johansen, 27, a student in Nuuk, told the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO. "We do not want to be told from the outside what to do or who to be. We just want to live in peace."