Angry Greenlanders have pointed out that Donald Trump’s right hand man doesn’t seem to know what his other right hand man is doing.

For while US vice president JD Vance on Friday claimed America wants to help Greenland, it has emerged that last month his fellow Trump top aide billionaire Elon Musk had abruptly scrapped vital US funding for business training here.

Vice president JD Vance, and his wife Usha, flew to a US base here on Friday, amid a storm of controversy, to reassert President Trump’s astonishing desire to take control of the island from Denmark.

Failing to completely rule out previous staggering suggestions America could use military force to seize Greenland – saying only that Trump ‘doesn’t think it is going to be necessary’ – he insisted the US would be good for the islanders while ‘Denmark has underinvested in Greenland’.

Yet worried Greenlanders – who have already marched in their thousands against a US takeover – pointed out that far from increasing investment in Greenland, the Trump administration has already reduced it.

The Greenland Business School, in the small capital Nuuk, had been promised a share £80,000 out of a total US aid package of £350,000, agreed in 2021, to help fund training in entrepreneurship for young students.

Manager for business school projects Nukappiaraq Kristiansen said there had been widespread interest, with teachers hired and students signed up to study, with American state-funded organisation USAID picking up the bill.

But then Donald Trump took office in January – his close aide Musk, owner of Tesla, and X (formerly known as Twitter) – was appointed head of the new Department of Government Efficiency.

Aviaja Fontain from Nuuk in Greenland, who is an anti Trump protester

Nuuk in Greenland ahead of the proposed Space Base visit by JD Vance

JD Vance speaks at the US military’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on March 28

And one of his first acts was to virtually close down USAID, with Trump and Musk denouncing it for wasting money and doing nothing for America.

As a result, the promised funding for Greenland was suddenly cancelled.

Greenland Business School’s Mr Kristiansen said he was devastated by the shock cancellation, adding: ‘This means the projects that we should have started all come to nothing. And it affects many, both the teachers and students.’

Local documentary-maker Dida Heilmann, 50, who has recently had traditional Inuit facial and chest tattoos amid a resurgence in interest in Greenland’s native culture, was contemptuous of America’s actions.

Miss Heilmann said: ‘Donald Trump and the others just use dirty tricks as they try to take over Greenland.

‘And they would be worse than the Danes have been.

‘They are not respecting us, they just think about money and want to have our minerals.

‘They don’t think about our values, or us as people.’

The National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk has also found itself part of the ongoing fightback against the US – with staff there already outraged by a visit in January from the president’s son Donald Trump Jnr.

Daily Mail reporter Neil Sears in Nuuk, Greenland

Angry Greenlanders have pointed out that Donald Trump ‘s right hand man doesn’t seem to know what his other right hand man is doing. Pictured is Nuuk

They complained he spent only a few minutes inside, solely interested in the gruesome mummies of Inuit women and a baby dating from the 15th century.

This week they hit back, it emerged, when Usha Vance’s staff asked if she could visit – and staff said she would not be welcome. Plans for the Vance’s to tour Greenland outside the US base were scrapped soon after.

Yesterday Denmark, which controls defence, foreign affairs and justice for increasingly autonomous Greenland, complained that while Vance had said the Danes provided poor security, he had not referred to Danish troops helping staff the very base he visited, Pituffik.

Danish foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said yesterday of Vance’s criticisms: ‘Many accusations and many allegations have been made. And of course we are open to criticism.

‘But let me be completely honest: we do not appreciate the tone in which it is being delivered. This is not how you speak to your close allies.’