NPR. Donald Trump is now officially the 47th president of the United States. And if Trump gets his way,

what we even think of as the United States might come to look very different.

And we're not talking metaphorically.

We're talking geographically.

Maybe you caught this statement of his a couple weeks ago.

Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes.

I've been told that for a long time, long before I even ran.

Trump has been kicking this idea around for years, which is that the U.S. should take, quote,

ownership of Greenland, a partially self-governing territory of Denmark. People really don't even know

if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security.

That's for the free world.

So short of using military force or economic coercion, which he has not ruled out,

how exactly does Trump imagine the U.S. taking ownership of Greenland?

Well, one thing is proposed, simply buying it.

To which many observers then said, wait, really?

This is the indicator for plan of money.

I'm Adrienne Ma.

And I'm Waylon Wong.

Can the U.S. just buy itself a country?

Is that a thing?

Turns out, when you look at our history, it is absolutely a thing.

It's called a sovereignty purchase. Today in the show, how these massive land deals shape the

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