Trump suggested Iceland become 51st US state in 2024 call with then-prime minister
Donald Trump raised the idea of Iceland becoming the 51st U.S. state in a phone call with then-Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson in November 2024, according to a memo of the conversation described to Icelandic public broadcaster RÚV by several people who have read it.
The call took place on Nov. 26, 2024, four days before Iceland’s parliamentary election. Trump, then president-elect, reached Benediktsson on his cell phone shortly after he got home. The call was informal and did not go through regular diplomatic channels. According to RÚV’s sources, no one in the U.S. government apparatus was aware of it.
By then, Trump had already spoken with the leaders of the other Nordic countries. He called Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Nov. 7, two days after the U.S. election. Finnish President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre followed within days, and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson a week after that.
Because the call was informal, there is no recording or formal transcript of it in either country. An international affairs adviser in the Prime Minister’s Office listened in, however, and took notes.
According to sources who have seen the memo, Trump spoke early in the call about the interest his friends and family had in Iceland and remarked, in a joking tone, that there had sometimes been talk of Iceland becoming the 51st state. Benediktsson is said to have waved the remark off as a lighthearted joke, but Trump interrupted and urged him to give the idea serious thought after winning the election.
Public accounts of the call at the time focused on Trump’s interest in Iceland as a tourist destination and in its history and culture. Benediktsson described the conversation in those terms in a Facebook post later that day, as did a press release from the Prime Minister’s Office the following day. Sources told RÚV that the memo paints a somewhat different picture.
Contacted by RÚV, Benediktsson declined to say whether the remarks were made. He said that as a former minister he considered it appropriate not to comment publicly, and that it was for the current government to decide whether to release the memo.
RÚV asked both the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs for a copy of the memo. The request was refused under an exemption in Iceland’s Information Act covering communications with foreign states and international organizations. In its reply, the foreign ministry said the document contained information about relations “based on mutual trust between the two countries,” and that its release could damage that relationship and harm Iceland’s interests. It added that keeping the document confidential served important public interests that outweighed the general interest in its release.
The sources who spoke to RÚV disagree about how to read the memo. Some believe Trump was joking. Others see more serious intent, pointing out that he often makes remarks in jest that can later become official policy, depending on how they are received. According to RÚV, the split does not follow party lines. The matter was reportedly raised at the most recent meeting of the Althing’s Foreign Affairs Committee, where it came as a surprise to members.
Three days after the call with Benediktsson, Trump made a similar suggestion to then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. When Canadian officials warned that Trump’s threatened 25 percent tariffs would seriously damage the Canadian economy, he proposed that Canada could simply become the 51st state. Canadian ministers at the meeting described the remark as a joke. Asked in a Fox News interview about 10 weeks later whether he was serious, Trump said he was.
The report follows a separate diplomatic dispute earlier this week. On Monday, Trump posted a map to his Truth Social account showing North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Greenland and Iceland covered by the U.S. flag and labeled “United States of America.”
The Icelandic government responded sharply. Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir summoned U.S. Ambassador Billy Long to a meeting that evening, where she told him the post was “completely unacceptable.”
“It is an insult to Icelanders, Canadians, Greenlanders to express themselves in this way,” Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir said the following day. “We should just be clear when it comes to it. There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states, especially today when it is not a given.”
Ambassador Long made headlines in Iceland earlier this year following reports that he had joked about making Iceland the 52st state. He later told Arctic Today that he apologized if he had offended anyone.
