WASHINGTON (AP) — In a break with past practice, President Donald Trump now meets with candidates for promotion to the rank of four-star general, the White House has acknowledged.
The Republican president has the meetings because he wants to make sure the U.S. military retains its superiority and its leaders focus on fighting wars, a White House spokesperson said.
“President Trump wants to ensure our military is the greatest and most lethal fighting force in history, which is why he meets with four-star-general nominees directly to ensure they are war fighters first — not bureaucrats,” assistant press secretary Anna Kelly said.
The meetings, however, are a departure from past practice, and knowledge of them has raised concerns about politicization of the military's top ranks. Trump has not always respected the long-standing tradition of walling off the military from partisan politics.
In June, Trump took the rare step of mobilizing the National Guard and then the Marines, sending hundreds of them into Los Angeles over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat with whom the president has feuded politically.
Trump followed up with a campaign-style rally at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, where uniformed soldiers cheered as he criticized former President Joe Biden, Newsom and other Democrats — raising concerns that Trump was using the military as a political prop.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., an Army veteran and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the meetings “very welcome reform.”
“I’ve long advocated for presidents to meet with 4-star nominees. President Trump’s most important responsibility is commander-in-chief,” Cotton wrote in a post on X. “The military-service chiefs and combatant commanders are hugely consequential jobs” and “I commend President Trump and Secretary Hegseth for treating these jobs with the seriousness they deserve.”
The New York Times, which first reported on the practice, said it had been initiated by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth makes remarks during a meeting with the Defense Ministers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, at the Pentagon in Washington, Friday, July 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
President Donald Trump, right, is escorted by Air Force 89th Air Wing Deputy Commander Melissa Dombrock, left, as he walks from Air Force One before boarding Marine One, upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Tuesday, July 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)
NUUK, Greenland (AP) — For several weeks, international journalists and camera crews have been scurrying up to people in Greenland's capital to ask them for their thoughts on the twists and turns of a political crisis that has turned the Arctic island into a geopolitical hot spot.
President Donald Trump insists he wants to control Greenland but Greenlanders say it is not for sale. The island is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark and the prime minister of that country has warned that if the U.S. tries to take Greenland by force, it could potentially spell the end of NATO.
Greenlanders walking along the small central shopping street of the capital Nuuk have a hard time avoiding the signs that the island is near the top of the Western news agenda.
Scores of journalists have arrived from outlets including The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, the BBC and Al Jazeera as well as from Scandinavian countries and Japan.
They film Nuuk's multicolored houses, the snowcapped hills and the freezing fjords where locals go out in small boats to hunt seals and fish. But they must try to cram their filming into about five hours of daylight — the island is in the far north and the sun rises after 11 a.m. and sets around 4 p.m.
Along the quiet shopping street, journalists stand every few meters (feet), approaching locals for their thoughts, doing live broadcasts or recording stand-ups.
Local politicians and community leaders say they are overwhelmed with interview requests.
Juno Berthelsen, MP for the Naleraq opposition party that campaigns for independence in the Greenlandic parliament, called the media attention “round two,” referring to an earlier burst of global interest following Trump's first statements in 2025 that he wanted to control Greenland.
Trump has argued repeatedly that the U.S. needs control of Greenland for its national security. He has sought to justify his calls for a U.S. takeover by repeatedly claiming that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland, which holds vast untapped reserves of critical minerals.
Berthelsen said he has done multiple interviews a day for two weeks.
“I'm getting a bit used to it,” he said.
Greenland's population is around 57,000 people —- about 20,000 of whom live in Nuuk.
“We’re very few people and people tend to get tired when more and more journalists ask the same questions again and again,” Berthelsen said.
Nuuk is so small that the same business owners are approached repeatedly by different news organizations — sometimes doing up to 14 interviews a day.
Locals who spoke to the AP said they want the world to know that it's up to Greenlanders to decide their own future and suggested they are perplexed at Trump's desire to control the island.
“It’s just weird how obsessed he is with Greenland,” said Maya Martinsen, 21.
She said Trump is “basically lying about what he wants out of Greenland,” and is using the pretext of boosting American security as a way to try to take control of “the oils and minerals that we have that are untouched.”
The Americans, Martinsen said, “only see what they can get out of Greenland and not what it actually is.”
To Greenlanders, she said, “it's home.”
“It has beautiful nature and lovely people. It’s just home to me. I think the Americans just see some kind of business trade.”
Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this report.
A journalist films in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Burrows)
An AP journalist films people sitting by the sea in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Burrows)
A journalist conducts an interview in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Burrows)
