But he then insulted Europe's biggest economy, saying everyone in the hall "would be speaking German" if it wasn't for the US. And then it came.
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"I'm asking for a piece of ice.. it's a very small ask."
It was incredible to see this said out loud.
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The president's attempts at charm seemed to win him polite applause. But as he went from rigged elections to his annoyance at other leaders' Davos speeches, some sat in disbelief.
Even though he promised not to invade Greenland, many were stunned by his attempts to persuade Europe to hand over the territory.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24vjvy3n1oTrump paints himself as great white hope in racism-drenched Davos speech
President’s anti-Somalia tirade and insults to European leaders were in line with aide Stephen Miller’s worldview
Donald Trump turned up in Davos wielding an insult bazooka. He mocked Emmanuel Macron’s aviator sunglasses, chided Mark Carney (“Canada lives because of the United States”), asserted that the Swiss are “only good because of us” and had a dig at Denmark for losing Greenland “in six hours” during the second world war.
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He lamented that “certain places in Europe are not even recognisable, frankly, any more”, blaming culprits that included “unchecked mass migration”. Trump said: “It’s horrible what they’re doing to themselves. They’re destroying themselves, these beautiful, beautiful places. We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones.”
What came next was pure racism as Trump reflected on immigration to his own country, where he has made the Somali community a special target of his deportation rhetoric after recent government fraud cases in Minnesota in which a majority of defendants had Somali roots.
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Then he got to the heart of the matter: “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. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed – it’s not a nation. Got no government, got no police, got no nothing.” (Somalia does, in fact, have a government, though not democratically elected.)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/21/trumps-davos-speech-stephen-miller-white-identity-politicsSpeak hysterically and carry a big stick: Trump’s foreign policy threats
The president, who at points during his speech referred to Greenland as Iceland, also argued that the US should get Greenland because the US has contributed to Nato and, in Trump’s telling, “gotten absolutely nothing in return”.
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Trump’s speech suggested that the US president knows little about US-Nato history: Nato’s Article 5, which triggers an obligation for each member state to come to the assistance of another, has been triggered just once: in 2001, after 9/11, when Nato countries came to the US’s aid. It was an outrageous claim for a US president to make, one which summarily dismissed the hundreds of thousands of European military members who served after the terrorist attacks on the US.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/21/trump-greenland-nato-foreign-policyIn one overflow room, attendees mockingly laughed and gasped throughout his speech.
Guffaws when Trump talked about wind farms killing birds. Nervous laughs when he said he was asking for "a piece of ice", meaning Greenland.
Stunned and turning to each other for confirmation when Trump abruptly started referring to Greenland as "Iceland".
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"I would say he's gone from neocon to neo-imperial," one attendee whispered.
An hour into Trump's rambling speech, people started to leave the overflow rooms. "He's a nutcase," one said on the way out.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260121-huge-lines-laughs-and-gasps-as-trump-addresses-davos-elites
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