For over an hour yesterday, Donald Trump delivered a speech to leaders at Davos that was at times focused and at others resembled incoherent rambling.
The combative American President covered considerable ground – and made a number of outlandish claims. So what was true and what wasn’t?
‘After the war we gave Greenland back. How stupid were we to do that? But we did it’
Technically, the US couldn’t ‘hand back’ Greenland to Denmark after the Second World War because it never took ownership or sovereignty over the island to begin with.
Greenland (which Trump repeatedly confused with Iceland throughout his speech) has remained under Danish sovereignty since the early 18th century.
Trump is partially correct, however, in alluding to the period after Nazi Germany occupied mainland Denmark in 1940. The US assumed responsibility for Greenland’s defence in a 1941 agreement with the Danish ambassador to the US. (At the time, the US was officially neutral in the war and had rejected a British plan to occupy the island.)
Although it established numerous military bases there, making Greenland a de facto US protectorate for defence purposes, the land remained Danish territory.
VERDICT: FALSE
‘I settled eight other wars’
The man who is still smarting that he didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize is exaggerating – although time may tell by how much. Trump was involved with three ceasefires in conflicts between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan and Israel and Iran.
He also played a key role in achieving Israel’s ceasefire with Hamas, even if peace there is hardly ‘settled’. Ditto a long-standing dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over a dam on the Nile, and a confrontation between Kosovo and Serbia.
Other wars that he’s claimed to have ended – between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, and between Thailand and Cambodia – have since erupted into renewed violence.
Some, like one between Albania and Azerbaijan, never began in the first place.
VERDICT: PARTIALLY TRUE
‘In 2025, for the first time in 50 years, the United States had reverse migration’
Although some liberal economists insist this is nothing to boast about, Trump’s claim stems from a report this month by a Washington think-tank the Brookings Institution.
It found the number of people emigrating to the US compared to the number leaving the country was close to zero or even negative last year.
The last time the US experienced this phenomenon, also known as ‘negative net migration’, was even longer ago than Trump claimed – during the Great Depression between 1931 and 1940, according to fact-checkers at the Poynter Institute.
VERDICT: TRUE
‘China makes almost all of the windmills and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China’
Trump has often repeated this claim, insisting this month that China makes turbines to ‘sell them to suckers like Europe, and suckers like the United States’ but don’t use them themselves.
In fact, while China still relies heavily on coal, it has about 44 per cent of the world’s wind farm capacity, the highest compared with any other country and nearly three times that of the US.
VERDICT: FALSE
‘Grocery prices, energy prices, air fares, mortgage rates, rent and car payments are all coming down, and they’re coming down fast’
The cost of living – not foreign affairs – is the key battleground in American politics.
Mortgage rates have decreased from around 7 per cent when Trump took office in January 2025 to a little over 6 per cent now. Air fares and car prices have also fallen.
Food and energy prices have risen, however. Eggs, milk and bread may be cheaper – but meat, fruit and vegetables are not.
Consequently, grocery prices have roughly increased at the same rate as they did during the last year of the inflation-prone Biden administration.
Energy is also significantly more expensive – nearly 7 per cent higher than a year ago – despite petrol prices having gone down.
VERDICT: PARTLY TRUE
‘We’ve never gotten anything from Nato’
Hardly so. Ironically, the only time the alliance has invoked Article 5, stating that an attack on one member is an affront on all, was after the terror attacks on the US on September 11, 2001.
Nato troops – including a contingent from now-scorned Denmark – fought and died alongside US forces in Afghanistan.
After President Barack Obama supported a ‘surge’ in the conflict, the number of non-US Nato troops doubled to more than 132,000 in 2011.
VERDICT: FALSE
