{"id":197670,"date":"2026-01-22T02:17:50","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T02:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-rambling-davos-speech-rehashes-warped-ideas-of-us-supremacy-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T02:17:50","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T02:17:50","slug":"trumps-rambling-davos-speech-rehashes-warped-ideas-of-us-supremacy-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/trumps-rambling-davos-speech-rehashes-warped-ideas-of-us-supremacy-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s rambling Davos speech rehashes warped ideas of US supremacy – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president\u2019s fixation on \u2018piece of ice\u2019 Greenland carries an echo of Vladimir Putin\u2019s claims about Crimea
The good news headline from Donald Trump\u2019s trip to Davos was that he seemed to rule out force<\/a> for now in his urgent quest to acquire Greenland. The bad news: he started talking about Iceland as well.
What might have been a big reveal about the next step in Trump\u2019s imperial ambitions was more likely a slip, though all speculation about the workings of the presidential brain is by now a guess at best.
It was possible to trace the origins of the glitch. Every time Trump expounded on his desire to own Greenland at Davos<\/a>, he described it as a big or beautiful \u201cpiece of ice\u201d, pronounced with the same lascivious relish as a Sopranos wiseguy sizing up a female character\u2019s attributes.
As a statement of geology, it was plainly untrue. Greenland is a significant landmass \u2013 the biggest island on the planet \u2013 but the notion of a \u201cpiece of ice\u201d has clearly lodged in Trump\u2019s mind, and from there it was a short mental hop to talking about Iceland instead.
The president\u2019s cognitive functions have been a source of concern for some time, but although Trump acknowledged he was now one of the older people at the Davos forum, he insisted he didn\u2019t feel old.
He had arrived later than scheduled after an aerial dysfunction, the presidential retinue forced to turn around over the Atlantic and return home with an electrical fault<\/a> on Air Force One.
He took off again but on a smaller plane, making for a less imposing arrival in Zurich for the world\u2019s most powerful man, but the delayed entrance only heightened the tension in the Swiss town. The apprehension was palpable in the hall by the time Trump appeared, a sort of reverse stage fright: the audience were far more scared than the performer.
This was the World Economic Forum after all, the embodiment of the postwar global liberal order that Trump has dedicated his second term to smashing. That order has come apart so completely and so quickly that Trump\u2019s seeming announcement that he was not about to send US troops to seize the territory of Denmark, a longstanding ally, counted as a win.
With its \u201cexcessive strength and force\u201d the US would be \u201cunstoppable\u201d, Trump claimed, but he added: \u201cI won\u2019t use force.\u201d
The relaxation of gripped jaw muscles around the room was almost audible and the president paused to take in the moment, savouring the fact the room was hanging on his words.
The day before, Canada\u2019s prime minister, Mark Carney, had told the same audience<\/a> that the world was \u201cin the midst of a rupture, not a transition\u201d.
It was the \u201cend of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality\u201d Carney said to the world\u2019s powerful and wealthy. \u201cWe know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn\u2019t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.\u201d
Carney did not mention Trump by name when he talked about \u201cgreat powers\u201d that had begun using \u201ceconomic integration as weapons\u201d, but Trump had no qualms about calling out Carney who he said was not sufficiently \u201cgrateful\u201d to Canada\u2019s powerful neighbour.
\u201cCanada lives because of the United States,\u201d the president said. \u201c Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.\u201d
This remarkable claim, the epitome of American supremacy, reflected a recurring theme of an otherwise rambling, disjointed address, which was mostly a stump speech aimed at a domestic audience.
As he had flown over Switzerland, he could see it was indeed a beautiful country, but he told his hosts they \u201cwouldn\u2019t have a country\u201d without the US. He suggested the same for much of Europe and the world \u2013 any country that had been maintaining a trade surplus with the US. His reasoning seemed to be that because countries had sold more than they had bought from his country, their very existence was parasitical.
\u201cYou\u2019ve been screwing us for 30 years,\u201d Trump shouted. \u201cAmerica is keeping the whole world afloat.\u201d
In his view of history, the US had taken over Greenland during the second world war and prevented imminent invasion (from Nazis presumably, although he gave no details), and then handed it back to Denmark in an act of foolish generosity.
Danish sovereignty in Greenland dates back 200 years and was unchanged during the war, but the idea that the US had somehow taken ownership of the island and then mistakenly surrendered it (an echo of Vladimir Putin\u2019s claims about Crimea before he claimed all of Ukraine) has stuck in Trump\u2019s consciousness and was Wednesday\u2019s reason for why Greenland had to belong to Trump.
It was a speech sprinkled with the overt racism<\/a> that has increasingly become part of the president\u2019s shtick. He repeated a slur against Somali Americans as social benefit cheats, based on a largely debunked \u201cinvestigation\u201d by a far-right YouTuber.
Trump claimed that \u201c$19bn in fraud\u201d had been \u201cstolen by Somalian bandits\u201d. He has previously expressed his desire to deport Somalis en masse.
The speech dwindled to a halt and there was a smattering of applause from a gathering that was glad just to have been schooled for admitting migrants into their country and backing renewable energy, rather than witnessing a full-on declaration of war on the stage in front of them.
Trump signed off with \u201cI\u2019ll see you around\u201d in a way that sounded foreboding. US troops would not be parachuting into the snow today at least, but the president made repeated references to the military might at his disposal should he change his mind.
The starkest reminder was silent, however. It came in the shape of the White House military office Marine Corps aide<\/a> who got off the president\u2019s helicopter with him in Davos holding the \u201cfootball\u201d, the black briefcase carrying the codes for launching the 900 nuclear weapons the US has on alert at all times. It is the constant antidote to any temptation to laugh at Trump\u2019s rants or gaffes.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president\u2019s fixation on \u2018piece of ice\u2019 Greenland carries an echo of Vladimir Putin\u2019s claims about CrimeaThe good news headline from Donald Trump\u2019s trip to Davos was that he seemed to rule out force for now in his urgent quest to acquire Greenland. The bad news: he started talking about Iceland as well.What might have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":197671,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-197670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}