Five takeaways from Trump’s antagonistic speech in Davos
President Donald Trump’s winding, antagonistic speech to business moguls and government officials in the Swiss Alps on Wednesday was hardly a salve to concerns the Western Alliance is at its breaking point.
Trump complained relentlessly about the United States being taken advantage of by Europe, and wondered incredulously why his attempt to take control of Greenland was being met with resistance.
He castigated European leaders for making their continent unrecognizable through what he cast as uncontrolled migration and radical economic policies.
And he speculated aloud about NATO’s willingness to come to the defense of the United States, without mentioning that the one time the alliance invoked its collective defense treaty was at the request of the Americans after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Still, for European officials listening closely for a roadmap of how the rupture might unfold, there was one glimmer of conciliation when Trump said he wouldn’t use force to take Greenland. And that, at a crisis moment for transatlantic ties, was something.
Hours after his speech, there was potential better news for Europe. Trump announced he’d reached a “framework of a future deal” on Greenland following a meeting with the NATO secretary general, and that the tariffs he’d threatened to impose next month were off.
“This solution, if consummated, will be a great one for the United States of America, and all NATO Nations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without providing any specifics on the arrangement.
Asked by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins as he was leaving the summit whether the deal fulfilled his desire to own Greenland, Trump paused for a moment to think before saying: “It’s a long-term deal.”
Still, his speech to Davos — filled with grievances and insults toward his European counterparts — left a mark. Here are five takeaways from his remarks.
Not taking Greenland by force
For European leaders listening anxiously to the president’s remarks on Greenland, there were four words in a speech of otherwise fiery rhetoric that mattered: “I won’t use force.”
It was the clearest statement yet from Trump that he would not attempt to seize Greenland using military might. Until Wednesday, the president had refused to rule it out, and the White House had said military options remained in play.
Taking it off the table will be a relief to officials who had been preparing for tense diplomatic confrontations with Trump to try and stave off a potential war. Markets responded positively, too, turning upward after a day of losses on Tuesday.
That’s not to suggest everything will be easy sailing going forward. Trump remained insistent that he would accept nothing less than full ownership of Greenland — a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
“This enormous unsecured island is actually part of North America,” Trump said. “That’s our territory.”
And he promised to remember those who opposed him.
“You can say no and we will remember,” he warned.
A historical argument
In reiterating his demand for control of Greenland — which he mistakenly called Iceland four times — Trump argued in Davos that “no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland, other than the United States.”
“Every NATO ally has an obligation to be able to defend their own territory,” he said. “We’re a great power, much greater than people even understand.”
Trump went on to slam Denmark as “ungrateful” for refusing to relinquish control of Greenland, contending that the nation owed the US for defending it during World War II.
“Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting, and was totally unable to defend either itself or Greenland. So the United States was then compelled, and we did it,” he said, lamenting the US’ decision at the time to allow Denmark to retain Greenland as a territory.
“How stupid were we to do that?” he said. “But we did it, but we gave it back. But how ungrateful are they now?”
A far and wide airing of grievances
Trump also took aim at a range of other targets both old and new, at one point even belittling host country Switzerland as “only good because of us.” He recounted a past exchange with a Swiss leader over tariffs, boasting that he decided to increase his levy on the country after she “rubbed me the wrong way.”
“We have many places like that where they’re making a fortune because of the United States,” Trump said to the largely European crowd, which sat in shocked silence. “Without the United States, they wouldn’t be making anything.”
Switzerland was far from the only foreign nation to take hits from Trump. The president mocked Emmanuel Macron’s “beautiful sunglasses” after the French president wore aviators indoors due to a minor eye condition, asking the crowd: “What the hell happened?”
As for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Trump opted to issue an ominous threat.
“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful, but they’re not,” Trump said, taking issue with Carney’s earlier remarks at the conference. “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
Trump used his speech to renew a pair of longstanding domestic grudges as well, attacking Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar.
“She comes from a country that’s not a country, and she’s telling us how to run America,” Trump said of Omar amid an extended diatribe against the nation of Somalia, adding that she’s “not going to get away with it much longer.” And he invoked alleged fraud in the state she represents, Minnesota, to make a thinly veiled xenophobic argument for the Western values that he said need to be protected and strengthened.
“The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own,” Trump said, claiming that Western prosperity stemmed from “our very special culture.”
“This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common,” Trump added. “We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the West from the depths of the Dark Ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”
A subdued Trump and a stunned crowd
For a while during Trump’s speech, the standing room-only crowd took the president’s personal jabs and off-topic asides in stride. The president, who appeared more subdued following a lengthy flight into Switzerland, garnered laughs for calling out “so many friends, a few enemies” in the audience and claiming that after his first year back in office, “people are doing very well. They’re very happy with me.”
Yet the attendees who stampeded into the room for a glimpse of Trump — crushing against each other to get in the door and nearly overwhelming the security staff — grew more restless and uncomfortable as the speech wound on, sitting largely in silence and offering only tepid applause at the end of the marathon remarks.
Trump’s extended argument for ownership of Greenland particularly alarmed some in the audience, who shook their heads and chuckled in disbelief as he described the territory as a necessary acquisition and slammed Denmark as “ungrateful.”
Another digression — and extended tirade against windmills — startled the room into nervous laughter as he inaccurately praised China for not having windfarms and called nations that rely on wind energy “stupid people.”
As Trump’s speech hit the hour mark and went into a section on his deployment of the National Guard to Washington, DC, and other US cities, some of the international crowd had clearly lost interest — with a few even getting up to leave early.
Trump himself even seemed to feel urgency to wrap up by the end, finishing out his remarks on a casual note: “I’ll see you around.”
A Europe he doesn’t recognize
If there was an underpinning to Trump’s hourlong speech — and it meandered in many directions — it was an abiding belief that Europe and its leaders had veered drastically off course.
While Trump claimed to love the continent’s nations — declaring himself “100%” Scottish and German — he had only disdain for how officials had managed immigration, security and economics over the past decades.
“Certain places in Europe are not even recognizable, frankly, anymore. They’re not recognizable. And we can argue about it, but there’s no argument,” Trump said minutes into his speech.
Recalling wars over the past century that required American intervention, Trump seemed intent on humiliating Europeans into granting him what he really wanted from them: Greenland.
“Without us right now, you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese,” he said.
And he insisted the world was reliant on the United States, and ungrateful in return.
“Without us, most of the countries don’t even work,” he bemoaned.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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