US president’s friend Ronald Lauder – who first proposed Arctic expansion – is now making deals in the island
O
ne day during his first term, Donald Trump summoned a top aide to discuss a new idea. “Trump called me down to the Oval Office,” John Bolton, national security adviser in 2018, told the Guardian. “He said a prominent businessman had just suggested the US buy Greenland.”
It was an extraordinary proposal. And it originated from a longtime friend of the president who would go on to acquire business interests in the Danish territory.
The businessman, Bolton learned, was Ronald Lauder. Heir to a makeup fortune – the global cosmetics brand Estée Lauder – he had known Trump, a fellow wealthy New Yorker, for more than 60 years.
