Donald Trump’s speech in Davos on Wednesday saw the US President address a wide range of topics, including his bid for Greenland, immigration in Europe, the US relationship with NATO, Venezuelan oil and inflation.
However, the address also featured a number of bizarre moments, including Trump referring to Greenland as Iceland, mocking Emmanuel Macron’s sunglasses, and appearing to say wind power caused lower birth rates.
Naming the wrong country, the US President said of NATO partners: ‘They’re not there for us on Iceland that I can tell you.’
He then said: ‘I’m helping Europe, I’m helping NATO and until the last few days when I told them about Iceland they loved me.’
Trump also made some eye-catching claims while launching into a criticism of wind power and green policies, in which he declared only ‘stupid people’ bought windmills from China.
He argued these policies had led to lower electricity production and higher prices in some countries.
He said the consequences of those policies included ‘lower economic growth, lower living standards, lower birth rates, more socially disruptive migration and much much smaller militaries.’
Trump also mocked French President Emmanuel Macron after the leader wore aviator sunglasses during his Davos speech on Tuesday, while accusing him of playing ‘tough’ over pharmaceutical price negotiations.
‘I watched him yesterday with those beautiful sunglasses. What the hell happened? But I watched him sort of be tough,’ Trump said of Macron’s hesitation to raise drug prices to be more in line with US rates.
‘I said, “Emmanuel you’ve been taking advantage of the United States for 30 years with prescription drugs. You really should do it, and you will do it,” Trump added.
The US President also told his audience that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Kyiv on Wednesday according to his office, would meet him later that day and that Zelensky ‘might be in the audience right now’.
Trump later claimed that ending the war between Russia and Ukraine was ‘reasonably close’, accusing both leaders of backing away from a deal and saying they would be ‘stupid’ if they could not agree on ending the conflict.
Another moment of confusion came when Trump recalled a tense call from Switzerland’s prime minister, whom he claimed was a woman, despite Switzerland having a male president and no prime minister.
‘They come in, they sell their watches, no tariffs, no nothing. They walk away. They make $41 billion on just us. So I said, no, we can’t do that,’ he said.
‘So I’m going to bring it up. But still we’d have a deficit pretty substantial. But I brought it up to 30%.’
‘And then I guess the Prime Minister, I don’t think president, I think Prime Minister, called, a woman, and she was very repetitive,’ Trump said.
‘She said, no, no, no, you cannot do that 30%. You cannot do that. We are a small, small country,’ he continued. ‘I said, yeah, but you have a big, big deficit.’
‘And she just rubbed me the wrong way, I’ll be honest with you,’ he said.
In another bizarre moment, Trump referred to ‘Abba-baijan’ while describing his role in settling the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Trump also revealed that Chinese President Xi Jinping had asked him to stop calling Coronavirus the ‘China Virus’.
‘I have always had a very good relationship with Xi. He is an incredible man. What he has done is amazing. He is highly respected by everybody,’ Trump said.
‘Our relationship was severely interrupted by Covid. I used to call it the China virus but he said, ‘do you think you could use a different name?’
‘And I decided to do that.’
During his speech, which lasted over an hour, Trump told Europe they would all be speaking German ‘and a little Japanese’ without the US as he doubled down on his demands for Greenland but ruled out using force.
Trump claimed the US ‘won’ the Second World War while highlighting the importance of Greenland for American security.
He said: ‘After the war we gave Greenland back. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it. How ungrateful are they now?
‘So now our country and the world face greater risks than it ever did before because of weapons of warfare that I can’t even talk about.’
However he confirmed he will not use military force to acquire Greenland amid tensions between the US and Europe.
‘We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be, frankly, unstoppable,’ he said.
‘But I won’t do that. Okay. Now everyone says, oh, good.’
‘All the US is a asking for is a place called Greenland,’ he said. ‘You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.’
