Bermuda as a potential spoil for the Trump administration to bring into the US fold has returned to the news — this time from the western side of the Atlantic.

Jesse Watters, an anchor on Fox News commenting on the furore generated by US President Donald Trump’s repeated demands for Denmark to surrender its autonomous territory of Greenland, said this week: “We let the British have Bermuda because it’s cute, but if we needed Bermuda, we’d take it. And the British would let it happen.”

Trump’s aggressive push for Denmark to part with Greenland came with the caveat this week at the Davos summit that he “won’t use force” — something of a dial-down from his January 9 response to a BBC query on the topic, when the president asserted that the US would take the massive Arctic island “the easy way” or “the hard way”.

Mr Watters, a conservative political commentator on a conservative-leaning network that has favoured Trump, comes with a history of colourful remarks.

His recent claims of US sovereignty in its broader sphere of influence included a suggestion “I think we own it — I know we own it”, meaning the Moon.

Other statements have drawn accusations of racism and trafficking in conspiracy theories.

Mr Watters’s references to Bermuda on his programme on Tuesday night were shortly followed by a return to referencing Trump as “daddy”, over a clip of the president returning home from Switzerland, which bemused viewers.

It came after a British geopolitical expert, Klaus Dodds, commented this month on the need for European powers to heed Trump’s threats over Greenland, warning that other territories — including Bermuda as well as the Falklands — could end up on the “shopping list” if Greenland were somehow to end up under the president’s thumb.

Mr Watters maintained it was “hilarious listening to Europeans lecturing us about a land grab, when Europe colonised the entire world”.

He added: “What Europe doesn't understand is that Greenland is an island in North America.

“You hear that? North America. And we have dominion over the entire Western Hemisphere. Europeans can't just have colonies right off the coast of Maine.”

Greenland is due east of the Canadian province of Nunavut, hundreds of miles north of the Canadian/US border.