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This past year, Thomas Dans' life has played out a bit like a redemption arc in a Tolstoy novel.
After failing to get a job in the early days of the second Trump administration — a roadblock that several sources linked to his involvement with the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 — Dans headed north to Greenland. From his self-imposed Arctic exile, he emerged ([link removed]) a new man, having built relationships and expertise that quickly cemented him as MAGA’s most qualified Greenland expert.
In a new profile for RS, reporter Connor Echols dives deep ([link removed]) into the role that Dans, a former investor, has played in President Donald Trump's most controversial foreign policy initiative. Through interviews with people who know and work with Dans, Echols paints a picture of a unique Trumpian innovation: the MAGA policy entrepreneur. These trusted allies work as Trump's informal envoys around the world, advancing his goals while side-stepping bureaucracy and maintaining a certain distance between the administration and its most contentious policies.
Dans, known for his fine suits and affable attitude, has played this role to perfection. Shuttling between the White House and the far north, he's helped channel MAGA's interest in Greenland, organizing trips for Donald Trump Jr. and Second Lady Usha Vance while cultivating American allies on the ground. If Trump's effort to take the island succeeds, then Dans will have claimed a place at the center of the initiative — and perhaps even earned a job as America's viceroy in Greenland.
Read the whole profile here ([link removed]) .
More exclusive RS coverage of Trump’s threats against Greenland:
* Can NATO survive Trump? Perhaps not, argues ([link removed]) Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities. In fact, Trump's aggressive approach to European allies suggests that "his administration may already have accepted and baked NATO’s impending disintegration into its planning and policymaking."
* QI's Anatol Lieven wonders ([link removed]) whether Trump's late-night musings on Greenland signal that the U.S. government is embracing a late Soviet style, in which "official statements have become so manifestly divorced from observable reality that the 'credibility' of the state does indeed collapse, in the eyes of the world and its own citizens."
* Writer Sam Fraser examines ([link removed]) Trump's drive to make territorial conquest cool again, arguing that the president is above all hoping to cement himself on the list of America's most consequential leaders.
* Billionaires in Trump's orbit have long hoped to build "freedom cities" without regulations or democratic oversight in Greenland. Trump may well help them get their way, writes ([link removed]) Pavel Devyatkin, a senior associate at the Arctic Institute and a non-resident fellow at QI.
* Danish and Greenlandic officials came to Washington last week in hopes of defusing tensions with the U.S. They left their meetings disappointed — and unsure of where to go next, explains ([link removed]) Devyatkin.
Top image credit: American investor Thomas Emanuel Dans poses in Nuuk's old harbor, Greenland, February 6, 2025. (REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier)
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