PRESIDENT Donald Trump has talked to aides and allies about buying Greenland for the US.

A Trump ally said the president had discussed the purchase but was not serious about it.

It would not be the first time an American leader tried to buy the world’s largest island, an autonomous territory of Denmark.

In 1946, the US proposed to pay Denmark 100 million US dollars to buy Greenland after flirting with the idea of swapping land in Alaska for strategic parts of the Arctic island.

Neither the White House nor Denmark immediately commented on the report which first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.