Trump sets off global panic after map suggests large-scale US takeover

In a post on Truth Social , Donald Trump envisioned all of North and Central America under the U.S. flag, an image that quickly triggered a major diplomatic incident and fractured already-frayed relationships as the president pursues his imperial ambitions.

Iceland’s Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir publicly condemned Trump’s map — which drapes the continent in red, white and blue — as an “insult” to the nation.

“We should just be clear when it comes to it,” she said Tuesday. “There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states, especially today when it is not a given.”

The image, which was posted without any further explanation or comment from the president or other administration officials, expands Trump’s increasingly trollish threats to annex sovereign neighbors and allies by throwing the U.S. flag over more than two dozen nations and territories.

Trump’s post — wrapping Central American nations and Caribbean islands in the U.S. flag, along with Canada, Mexico, Greenland and Iceland — has also drawn public rebukes from top officials in Denmark and Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum said her country’s sovereignty “is non-negotiable.”

Iceland’s Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir summoned U.S. Ambassador Billy Long to her office on Monday to “convey a clear message that the image was wholly inappropriate,” according to a statement.

“There was a reason to call the ambassador to a meeting and present a very clear message on our part that this was completely unacceptable,” she added Tuesday.

“I have been repeatedly advised by within the American administration that we should perhaps not take the current U.S. president literally, but we should take him seriously,” Gunnarsdóttir said. “That is exactly what we are doing and emphasizing that Iceland is sovereign, it is an independent state that is responsible for its own destiny.”

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen also told reporters on Monday that “the Greenlandic government and the Greenlandic people have said again and again that they do not wish to be American.”

“We can certainly repeat that message today,” she said.

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen called Trump’s post “disturbing.”

“It’s obviously a sign that the U.S. president still harbors some kind of maximalist vision in his own mind,” Rasmussen told the national broadcaster DR on Tuesday. “We need to rein that in.”

In remarks at a press conference on Monday, Sheinbaum referred to the U.S. as a “country that is not doing well, that is not leading with power.”

In a subsequent post on X, she wrote: “In the month of the homeland, we reaffirm that Mexico is neither, nor will, be a colony or protectorate of any foreign country. Proudly we are a free, independent, and sovereign nation.”

Trump’s post was among dozens on his Truth social over Labor Day weekend, including at least eight images showing the state of New Mexico changed to “New America” and an AI-generated clip that depicts the president repeatedly beating Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney with a hockey stick.

Natalie Harp, one of the president’s top aides who is increasingly in control of his social media diet, was reportedly by his side throughout the weekend at his golf club in New Jersey.

Trump’s social media provocations have followed increasingly volatile foreign policy moves, from formally trying to rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” while not ruling out military intervention when it comes to his ambitions to occupy Greenland. That aspiration appears to have taken the backseat as he keeps the U.S. at war with Iran and entangles the U.S. in tariff wars with key trading partners.

The Trump administration has also deposed and arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and assumed control over the nation’s oil industry, killed more than 200 people on alleged drug-running boats throughout the Caribbean and Pacific, and levied intense economic pressure on Cuba with an eye towards toppling its communist government.

Arctic states have increasingly been on edge after Trump threatened U.S. control of Greenland and after he mistakenly called the island “Iceland” when speaking about his ambitions for the Danish autonomous territory.

Iceland is a NATO member, but Trump’s gaffe spurred its left-leaning coalition government to move swiftly on a referendum on whether the country should return to negotiations on whether to become a member of the European Union.

Voters rejected the measure last month. Thousands of Icelanders, meanwhile, have signed a petition urging the prime minister to reject Long — Trump’s former IRS commissioner — as U.S. ambassador after he joked about the nation becoming the 52nd U.S. state. Long later apologized.

“Icelanders are used to looking toward the U.S. as Iceland’s defender,” Eirikur Bergmann, a politics professor at Bifrost University in Iceland, told The New York Times . “Now, our protector has become our intimidator.”

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