Before heading to Davos, Trump yells at Europe.
As European leaders try to engage with the American president over Greenland and the future of Ukraine, he is mocking them as weak.
This week, resident Trump and his entourage will travel to Europe. Additionally, they are exhibiting contempt. When reporters inquired about European leaders’ efforts to block Mr. Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who was already rubbing shoulders with elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, offered a sharp response. Trump from seizing Greenland.
“I imagine they will form the dreaded European working group,” Mr. Bessent stated that it was their “most potent weapon.” It is not a secret that the president and his assistants see Europe as a collection of weak, ineffective nations ruled by liberal leaders and entangled in bureaucracy. His administration’s official national security strategy, released last month, said Europe had lost its “civilizational self-confidence” amid a “failed focus on regulatory suffocation.”
But rarely has the mocking been so overt.
Early on Tuesday morning, as Europe’s leaders continued to wring their hands over the president’s latest threats to Greenland, Mr. Trump uploaded a meme that appeared to have been generated by artificial intelligence and featured him standing on the island while raising an American flag. “Greenland. U.S. Territory. “Est. 2026,” read the meme. Mr. Trump had not even arrived in Switzerland yet.
However, he continued to treat the leaders he was about to meet with contempt as he prepared to speak there on Wednesday. When journalists informed Mr. Trump that President Emmanuel Macron of France was not going to join the American-led “Board of Peace” overseeing Gaza, Mr. Trump waved aside Mr. Macron dismissed his opinions as meaningless, stating that he would be “out of office in a few months.” “I’ll put a 200 percent tariff on his wines and Champagnes, and he’ll join, but he doesn’t have to join,” the president said, flexing the power of the American market and underscoring France’s vulnerability to his whims.
Additionally, he posted messages from Mr. Macron and Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, on Truth Social — showing just how much European leaders are heaping praise on Mr. Trump appears to be making an effort to keep him interested.
“I will use my media engagements in Davos to highlight your work,” Mr. Trump In the message, Rutte wrote that Mr. Trump disclosed. “Let us try to build great things,” Mr. Macron said, “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” but he also made a comment. Mr. Trump also took aim at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, using his trademark all-caps remark to express his displeasure with the United Kingdom’s decision to cede sovereignty over Diego Garcia and the other Chagos Islands while maintaining control of a military base there that was jointly operated by the United Kingdom and the United States.
The islands, a remote archipelago that Mauritius had held since the colonial era, were handed over to Mauritius in 2024. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later praised the deal, which came after years of negotiations, and after a court found that Britain had acted unlawfully by detaching the archipelago from Mauritius in 1965.
“Our ‘brilliant’ NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia,” the president wrote on his social media site, accusing Britain of doing so “FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”
He went on to say that powers on the international stage “only recognize strength” and that giving the island away was an “act of great stupidity.” Mr. Trump’s heckling has troubled European leaders, many of whom are hoping to communicate with him on the sidelines of the Davos meetings. On Thursday evening, leaders from all 27 members of the European Union will meet in Brussels to discuss how to respond to his most recent threats against Greenland. Europe’s leaders are urging the continent to cut ties with the United States as the country appears to be a more and more volatile and unpredictable ally.
During a speech she gave on Tuesday morning at Davos, the president of the executive arm of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, said that the old way of doing things was over. She stated, “Nostalgia will not bring back the old order,” arguing that “playing for time—and hoping for things to revert soon” was not an acceptable strategy. She went on to say, “If this change is permanent, Europe must also change permanently.” However, Europe has primarily attempted to accommodate Mr. Trump and keep him at the table — worried that he’ll pull back needed American support from NATO or Ukraine — even as he mocks them as weak.
On Tuesday, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom criticized world leaders for not standing up to Mr. Trump, claiming that Europeans required “backbone.” He told reporters in Davos, “I should have brought a lot of kneepads for all the world leaders.” “I mean, it’s pathetic that crowns are being given out in recognition of Nobel Prize winners. It is truly pitiful.”
