If this was just about a cluster of remote islands, it would be a minor diplomatic footnote. Instead, President Donald Trump just turned the Chagos Islands into a megaphone for his Greenland fixation, and he did it by torching a deal his own administration previously praised.
The friction point is Diego Garcia, a strategic U.K.-U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean. The political hook is even simpler. Trump is now calling the U.K. decision to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius “great stupidity,” even though the Trump administration had supported the deal, according to reporting from CBS News.
A Truth Social blast meets an awkward paper trail
In a lengthy post on Truth Social, Trump framed the U.K. move as weakness that would be noticed by rivals, then used it as a springboard to argue that the United States should “acquire” Greenland. CBS News reported the post was published early Tuesday, alongside Trump’s claim that the Chagos handover added to the “National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
Trump’s own words did the heavy lifting. He wrote: “The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
That is the new public posture. The complication is the older record.
The Chagos deal Trump’s team said secured the base
The Chagos Islands sit in the Indian Ocean and were split from Mauritius in 1965, when Mauritius was still a British colony, CBS News noted. Mauritius gained independence in 1968, and has long argued it was forced to give up the islands as a condition of independence.
The U.K. purchased the islands for the equivalent of about $4 million, according to BBC News reporting cited by CBS News. The U.K. then invited the United States to build the military base on Diego Garcia, which became a central node for American defense operations in the region.
In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion, which is non-binding, calling on the U.K. to end its administration of the Chagos Islands. The court said the U.K. had wrongfully forced people out of Diego Garcia to make way for the base, according to CBS News’ summary of the ruling.
That legal pressure helped set the stage for a 2024 agreement for the U.K. to hand over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Under the reported terms, Britain would keep control of the Diego Garcia base via a 99-year lease costing the U.K. about $136 million per year, CBS News reported.
And here is where the timeline matters. CBS News reported that the Trump administration had previously supported the Chagos agreement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement in May 2025 saying the administration’s review determined the deal “secures the long-term, stable, and effective operation” of the joint U.S.-U.K. facility at Diego Garcia. Rubio also said Trump had expressed support for the agreement during a meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House, according to CBS News.
So the dispute is not whether the base is important. All sides agree it is. The dispute is whether the sovereignty handover is a strategic safeguard or a strategic surrender.
London says this was about protecting the base, not giving it away
Trump’s post framed the move as the U.K. “giving away” Diego Garcia itself. The British government’s public response, sent to CBS News, leaned hard the other way. A spokesperson said Britain would “never compromise” on national security and argued court decisions had undermined the U.K. position, putting the base at risk unless a deal was struck.
The U.K. government statement also emphasized allied buy-in. It said: “This deal secures the operations of the joint U.S.-U.K. base on Diego Garcia for generations, with robust provisions for keeping its unique capabilities intact and our adversaries out.”
The same statement noted that the agreement had been publicly welcomed by the U.S., Australia, and other Five Eyes allies, plus partners including India, Japan, and South Korea, CBS News reported.
The five-country Five Eyes intelligence partnership includes the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
Mike Johnson plays the calm friend while Trump plays the alarm bell
The moment also produced a split-screen. As Trump was escalating online, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was physically in the U.K., addressing the British Parliament. CBS News reported Johnson told lawmakers the two countries had always been able to work through differences “calmly as friends,” and he said that remained true.
That contrast matters because it shows two parallel messages from Washington. One is aimed at alliance maintenance and legislative diplomacy. The other is aimed at public pressure, and it uses security language as a cudgel.
Neither message changes the geography. But both can change the political temperature in London, Copenhagen, and Washington.
Why Greenland keeps getting pulled into unrelated fights
Trump’s Greenland argument has always been framed as strategy, location, and leverage. This time, he connected it to Chagos by presenting a broader thesis. Allies, in his view, make decisions that expose vulnerabilities, and the United States should respond by controlling more strategically valuable territory.
Even in Trump’s own framing, Greenland is not the same issue as Chagos. Greenland is an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, and any transfer of sovereignty would implicate Denmark, Greenland’s government, and international law. Chagos is a sovereignty transfer from the U.K. to Mauritius, with a lease designed to preserve the base.
But Trump’s political move is clear. He is stitching them together into a single argument about strength, deterrence, and who is “doing the right thing,” as he put it on Truth Social, according to CBS News.
The friction point is that his administration previously described the Chagos agreement as the way to keep Diego Garcia stable and operational long-term. Now he is describing the same agreement as evidence that the world only respects strength, and that the United States should pursue Greenland more aggressively.
What to watch next, and where the pressure lands
Three developments will tell readers whether this becomes a lasting rupture or a brief flare-up.
First, whether the White House or State Department clarifies how Trump’s latest rhetoric fits with the prior Rubio statement backing the deal after an interagency review, as reported by CBS News.
Second, whether London treats Trump’s comments as political noise or as a signal that Washington might try to reopen or harden terms around Diego Garcia, even if the reported lease framework stays intact.
Third, whether Denmark and Greenland face renewed rhetorical pressure tied to Trump’s “acquire Greenland” language. Trump’s post directly called on Denmark and “its European Allies” to “DO THE RIGHT THING,” CBS News reported, which is the kind of phrasing that often precedes a new round of public bargaining.
For now, the Chagos Islands are a reminder that the most sensitive fights are not always the ones with missiles on the table. Sometimes it is a lease, a court opinion, a sovereignty transfer, and one leader’s decision to call it “GREAT STUPIDITY” after his own team said it secured the base “for generations.”
