Trump at Davos, 2026 version

Apparently, Trump was completely bonkers, dismissive of Scandinavian countries, and insulting of our allies. And they noticed.

CanadianPrime Minister Mark Carney didn't mince words.

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

[...]

Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

[...]

It seems that every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won't.

So, what are our options?

  World Economic Forum

Continue reading. 

He talks about the fiction of the system we have been living in for decades. It's very good.

He also lays out what Canada has been doing in light of the rupture created by Trump:

We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days, we've concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We're negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We're doing something else. To help solve global problems, we're pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we're a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.

Our commitment to NATO's Article 5 is unwavering, so we're working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground, boots on the ice.

[...]

On plurilateral trade, we're championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we're forming buyers’ clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we're cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won't ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers.

This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It's building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.

[...]

This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.

[...]

We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power.

But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.

The world is experiencing a shift away from rules and international law, French President Emmanuel Macron told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

"It's ... a shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest," Macron said, adding that what he called "imperial ambitions" were resurfacing.

  Reuters

And, what was Trump saying?

[...]

In the midst of an active campaign to burn down the Western world order by forcibly annexing territory from a NATO ally, the rogue president of the rogue United States of America ranted incoherently for some 90 minutes about windmills, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and an apparent daddy fetish.

He confused Greenland with Iceland not once, not twice, but three times.

[...]

The mad, delusional, ranting emperor has no clothes on. And yet there is no truth-telling child in sight. Just a coterie of shameless liars, grifters, and sycophants bent on engaging in a cover-up about the clear mental incompetence of the most powerful man on Earth.

  Zeteo

 

Yes, our president is a piece of shit.

You can only use the same vein so long before you have to give it a rest.

Donald Trump sounded like a fascist dictator suffering from a brain bleed during his speech yesterday at Davos. It was a national embarrassment even by the lowly standards of modern American politics.

[...]

Trump’s screed was chillingly aggressive. He began the Greenland part of it with a thinly veiled threat against NATO, claiming his recent coup in Venezuela proves his regime is a “much greater power than people even understand.” He contrasted his purported strength with European weakness.

“We saw this in World War 2 when Denmark fell to Germany after just six hours of fighting and was totally unable to defend either itself of Greenland,” Trump said to total silence, adding that “without us, right now you'd all be speaking German and a little Japanese.” (German is in fact an official language of Switzerland.)

[...]
Trump then channeled Hitler during the Sudetenland crisis, demanding “immediate negotiations to discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States" — or else.

“We probably won't get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won't do that. Okay?"


  Public Notice

And what did he "get" after making a "deal"? Nothing.

Trump shortly after his speech pulled a TACO, posting on Truth Social about a vague “framework of a future deal” involving NATO and Greenland. But during a subsequent interview with CNBC, Trump was unwilling and/or unable to provide any details, instead characterizing the framework (which sure sounds like the status quo) as “a concept of a deal.”

Alas, NATO Secretary Mark Rutte confirmed later on Fox News that the status of Greenland wasn’t even discussed as part of Trump’s “framework.” The “deal” appears to be about as meaningful as a degree from Trump University.

In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s speech, cable coverage seized upon his “I won’t do that” comment as evidence he’s taken armed aggression against NATO off the table. But of course he also ruled out strikes within Venezuela until shortly before he launched them.

[...]

That Trump backed down hours after his Davos speech is a promising sign that financial markets and diplomatic pressure (not to mention the grassroots organizing that’s taking place in the occupied Twin Cities) can still provide something of a check on his desire to carve up the world between strongmen like himself, Putin, and President Xi. But one year in, he and his regime are getting worse.

[...]

One day after Prime Minster Carney delivered a historic speech at Davos [...] Trump huffed that Carney “wasn’t so grateful” for all America has done for his country and said, “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”

[...]

He made up that “we have new steel plants being built all over the country,” claimed that “I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China” (the country in fact operates some of the largest ones in the world), and vowed that there will soon be prosecutions over his 2020 election loss, which he delusionally claimed was “rigged. Everybody now knows that. They found out.”

 He's literally rotten.

UPDATE 02:34 pm:

It's possible.  Old people skin does that.  But what are the excuses for the previous times photographs have shown bruises on his left hand?

UPDATE 01/23/2026:   What it took to bring Kier Starmer around...

 But surely he knows he won't get one.

R.I.P. America and NATO

Trump in Davos is an international embarrassment.

“To me, a town looks better when you have military people [on the streets].”

That was but one of the many, many 5-alarm fire-worthy statements the former leader of the free world slurred before a packed scrum of reporters at a White House press briefing yesterday afternoon, mere hours after he terminated the Western world order.

I mean that quite literally.

“So at what point are we going to realize the enemy is within 🤬,” read a social media post promoted by Donald Trump, “China and Russia are the boogeymen when the real threat is… NATO…”

Regardless of whatever intention the commander in chief may have had, regardless of how earnestly he believes what he reposted, the planet responded appropriately. Western leaders, oh-so conveniently gathered in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum, all but excommunicated the US from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance that lasted nearly eight decades.

“I will talk today about the breaking of the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction, and the beginning of a brutal reality where the geopolitics of the great powers is not subject to any constraint,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the crowd of dignitaries.

“Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

“Let me be direct,” he pronounced, “we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

[...]

The Bad Orange Man has, at the very least, for a few generations, removed us from the West.

  Zeteo

 

Trump in Davos - Part 2 (today)

Put that in the evidence for impeachment article 2, obstruction of Congress.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Trump in Davos

President Trump said in a Wall Street Journal interview Tuesday that the White House plans to unveil a new tax-cut proposal in 90 days.

“We’re talking a fairly substantial ... middle-class tax cut that’ll be subject to taking back the House and obviously keeping the Senate and keeping the White House,” the president said. Trump declined to provide specifics about the plan.

  The Hill

Mark your calendars.

In October 2018, Trump floated unveiling a middle-class tax cut ahead of the midterm elections the following month, but did not end up doing so.

And he's already been contradicted this time around.

White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow gave a different timetable than Trump in a CNBC interview last week, saying then that the proposal could be unveiled "perhaps sometime later in the summer."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Your embarrassing president at Davos

"An economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before."  !!

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Your president at Davos

He has to watch Fox News even while being interviewed.

[Trump] spoke to the [Wall Street] Journal shortly before participating in a bilateral meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

[...]

The president occasionally paused the interview to comment on Fox News, which was playing on a television in the background during the interview. At one point, he commented on footage of the gun-rights protests in Virginia, calling the state’s governor, Democrat Ralph Northam, a “wack job.”

He suggested the protests have benefited him politically. “Thank you very much for handing me Virginia,” he said.

In another moment, Mr. Trump reacted to a headline about U.F.C. fighter Conor McGregor praising his presidency. “That’s good,” he said. “I’m not going to fight him, I guarantee you that.”

“He beat the hell out of the guy,” Mr. Trump added.

  WSJ

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What Fox viewers didn't get to see

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Taking on Davos

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No Davos trip for anybody

US President Donald Trump has cancelled his delegation's trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week due to the ongoing partial government shutdown.

Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement on Thursday that Trump made the move "out of consideration for the 800,000 great American workers not receiving pay and to ensure his team can assist as needed".

  alJazeera

Hardly. He cancelled the trip after he took heat for cancelling the Congressional delegate trip to Afghanistan out of spite.

Trump, who attended last year's Davos event, had planned to go again this year, but pulled out last week as he grapples with Democrats in Congress over funding for a wall on the border with Mexico that has led to the shutdown.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were expected to lead the US delegation in Trump's place.

Mnuchin and Pompeo had planned to speak jointly at the opening session of the forum on January 22.

They were also expected to jointly host a dinner of the Group of Seven foreign and finance ministers to discuss national security and economic issues.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer also planned to be part of the delegation.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What's the real reason he's not going to Davos?

Officials in Davos have authorized a protest by a Socialist youth group against U.S. President Donald Trump and other expected attendees of the annual World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort this month.

Authorities rejected a similar protest request last year when Trump attended the elite event, citing heavy snowfall.

  AP

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Taxpayers foot the (very high) bill for His Lardship's hobnobbing

Donald Trump has trashed relationships with the U.S.’s closest allies the past year, insulted foreign leaders, scorned decades-old alliances in overseas meetings, and undermined global regulatory bodies.

Nonetheless, he plans to travel to the World Economic Forum in Davos again this coming January to hobnob with some of the richest, most powerful people from around the world, including CEOs, philanthropists, heads of state, and royalty—the very globalists he disparages.

[...]

This is the second year in a row that Trump will attend. U.S. presidents had not regularly attended Davos before Trump: Ronald Reagan gave a speech via video, and George Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama skipped the forum entirely. Bill Clinton didn’t attend until the last year of his presidency.

[...]

Trump will accompanied by a large administration contingent, including six cabinet members, dozens of officials and aides, and his daughter Ivanka, and U.S. taxpayers are on the hook for a hefty bill.

Already, hotel expenses alone have reached about $2.9 million.

[...]

The final bill for the Trump administration’s Davos trip will almost certainly be far higher still, because there is often a lag of weeks or sometimes months between when the U.S. government spends money and then files spending records. Only nine travel expenditures related to WEF 2019 have been posted thus far; a total of 38 are posted on the federal government’s main public-facing spending database for Trump’s trip to Davos last January.

The costs also don’t include the estimated $2.2 million for the cost of flying Air Force One.

  Govexec

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

He won, now praise him

For all his anti-establishment [campaign] bluster, Trump has proven to be a paper tiger as president. Instead of cracking down on Wall Street plutocrats, he’s appointed them to his cabinet and given them tax cuts. Instead of browbeating world leaders, he’s let them flatter him into submission with theatrically obsequious state visits. Instead of locking out the sneering media elites, he’s pantingly courted the approval of New York Times reporters and book-writing dandies from Manhattan. And while he hobnobs in Davos with the globalist glitterati, the ragtag team of loyal lieutenants who set out in 2016 to upturn the established order with Trump has been largely shoved to the sidelines or purged altogether from his White House.

[...]

Indeed, while Trump’s “populism” has manifested itself primarily in performative spasms of culture war, the most substantive policy victories of his first year in office have gone to the donor-class conservatism of Paul Ryan and his fellow swamp creatures in the congressional leadership. As it turns out, all they had to do was ask nicely.

[...]

Shortly after his election, congressional sources said, a consensus began to form within the Republican caucus that any member willing to engage in a bit of ego-stroking had a good shot at gaining the president’s ear.

[...]

In this Washington-wide scramble to cozy up to Trump, some Republicans took straightforward approaches. They held their campaign fundraisers at his eponymous D.C. hotel. They trekked to his golf course to pose for grinning pictures on the green and pitch him on their pet issues. They got themselves booked on his favorite cable-news shows and praised him effusively for this historic victory or that act of decisive leadership.

[...]

Others, meanwhile, opted for more creative acts of courtship. In perhaps the most famous instance, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy assigned a staffer to sort through packs of Starbursts and fill a jar with just the pinks and reds so that he could present the president with his favorite flavors.

[...]

When immigration talks began to heat up on the Hill, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham—who had spent years working on the issue—abruptly dropped his barbed criticisms of the president and took on a conciliatory, even admiring, tone. Graham made no effort to conceal the reasons for this sudden shift. “You could be dark as charcoal and lily white, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re nice to him,” Graham told CNN. “You could be the pope and criticize him, it doesn’t matter, he’ll go after the pope. You could be Putin and say nice things, and he’ll like you.”

[...]

Often, it seems, the most powerful bartering chip a lawmaker has to offer the Trump White House is not a vote for a given bill or a pledge of support for a given policy, but rather an expression of personal affection for Trump himself.

[...]

People who know him well say the president has taken special pleasure over the past year in watching the parade of pols who once greeted his candidacy with scorn line up to kiss his ring. The nastier you have been to him in the past, the more delighted he is when you want to make up.

[...]

As The Wall Street Journal recently outlined in its “How-To Guide” for dealing with the commander in chief, each would-be Trump-whisperer has developed his or her own technique. When Trump wants to take serious trade action against other countries, for example, advisers will sometimes come up with reasons to stall, “hoping he’ll forget what he wanted done and move on to something else.” When Trump is weighing defense options, Mattis will gently steer him with a combination of flattery and Jedi mind tricks. “He says, ‘Your instincts are absolutely correct,’ and then gets [Trump] to do the exact opposite of what his instincts say,” a source told the Journal.

[...]

Though he ran in 2016 as a foe of the billionaire donor class, Trump had spent much of his professional life before that trying (and tragically failing) to convince America’s corporate chieftains that he was more than just a cartoonish TV personality—that he was one of them. The resulting sense of victimhood he carried with him might have made for fiery stump speeches on the campaign trail, but it also meant that once he won, he was tickled to learn that real-life titans of industry like Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson actually wanted to come work for him. To Trump, Nunberg said, they were like “big shiny toys” to be collected and proudly displayed—eliciting oohs and ahhs from all who beheld his glittering cabinet.

[...]

Given the kind of team Trump had assembled, then, it is perhaps not surprising that the signature legislative accomplishment of his first year in office included massive tax cuts for corporations and rich people. He didn’t pitch it this way to voters, of course. In the weeks leading up to the passage of the tax overhaul, he repeated the claim that “the rich will not be gaining at all with this plan.” But inside the walls of his beachfront estate in Florida—mingling with people who had shelled out $200,000 for Mar-a-Lago memberships—he couldn’t resist showing off just a little.

Within hours after signing the bill into law, CBS News reported, Trump told attendees, “You all just got a lot richer.”
  The Atlantic

So, bow down to your leader.

Trump’s promise to voters in 2016 was simple: Put him in the White House, and he would bring a swift end to all this laughter [of other countries who are taking advantage of the US]. He would crack down on Beijing over currency manipulation, twist arms in Riyadh over oil prices, and blow up any multilateral trade deals he deemed unfair to U.S. workers.

But this hard-charging posture began to melt the moment Trump’s phone started ringing after the election. With heads of state and political leaders calling from around the world to congratulate him, Trump “tossed aside” the carefully honed protocols for such conversations, and chose to giddily wing it instead: He was, a senior transition official told The New Yorker, just “excited that important people were calling him.”

[...]

[Taking advantage of his vanity, some foreign leaders] appealed to Trump by loading up his state visits with flamboyantly glitzy trappings. In Saudi Arabia, he was driven around the Murabba Palace grounds in a gold golf cart; in China, his welcome party included celebratory cannon fire, military bands, and young children with pompoms shouting, “Uncle Trump!”

[...]

Dan Kurtz-Phelan, a former State Department official and the executive editor of Foreign Affairs, told me world leaders have developed a kind of shared playbook for dealing with Trump. They suck up aggressively (often mentioning the size of his electoral-college victory).

[...]

“With past presidents, it was harder for flattery to change policy from black to white over the course of two hours.”

[...]

Polls show that global trust in American leadership plummeted to historic lows in 2017. China is facing virtually no pressure from Trump on key issues like human rights and intellectual property, while longtime allies have been left to wonder about the resilience of their relationship with the U.S. And if all this is supposed to add up to an America First doctrine, few Republicans are able to make sense of it.

[...]

The Global Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is the kind of thing that Donald Trump never got invited to before he became president. In fact, the famously exclusive annual meeting for the geopolitical elite and the respectable rich (or “Davos Men,” as they are often referred to, with varying degrees of irony) epitomizes the establishment that Trump rose to power railing against.

[...]

But from the moment Air Force One touched down in Switzerland, it seemed clear that Trump did not see himself as a gate-crasher. His invitation to Davos had been like the lifting of a velvet rope, and in this rarified setting, he was on his very best behavior.

[...]

It might have felt like a moment of triumph for the president. But in Trump’s lifelong quest to gain entry into favored crowds like this one, he’s never been able to escape the gnawing fear that behind the obsequious smiles lurks a fundamental lack of respect.

And he has no earthly idea how to earn it. He never earned anything in his disgusting life.

Trump in Davos

For all the crowing about Trump getting booed at Davos (I don't agree that's what happened), I'm sure there are articles praising him.  On the other hand, Politico has a report that strikes me as something more realistic, and rather than excerpt any of it, I'll just point you to it, here.

Puffed up poppinjay

President Trump compared arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to the Academy Awards “but with more photographers.”

  The Hill

The most, I'm told. Some are saying. That's what I heard.

Trump boasted about his administration’s repeal of regulations and the passage of the GOP tax plan in an interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen Friday, saying the combination of the two efforts means “we have a dynamic country again.”

[...]

“And without me being here and without what we've been doing including regulation, by the way, because I happen to think that regulation is as big as the tax cuts, okay? I think the tax cuts are incredible. But I think the regulations, the cutting of regulations – because the businesses couldn't even – they couldn't do anything. They were totally bound,” he continued.

“The cutting of the regulations was every bit as important as what we did with the tax cuts. I mean, everybody's talking. I just came out and some really wonderful people said, ‘Davos has never been like this,’” Trump said. “This is like walking into the Academy Awards, except we have more photographers.”

"Davos has never been like this."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 1/28:  I don't know why the word popinjay popped into my head for this post's title; it's not a word I commonly - if ever - use.  But, apparently I've misspelled it.

Game on at Davos

Or, the Roman Colosseum.

Donald Trump's administration is "a danger to the world" and is attempting to "establish a mafia state", according to a speech by financier and philanthropist George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

  IB times

Actually, as I mentioned before, Trump's whining about Palestine being disrespectful to the US, does sond like mob talk. You have to wonder how any organization could function with him at the top, though.

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

Soros told the audience that the US Constitution, other institutions and "a vibrant civil society" are standing in the way of Trump's plans.

[...]

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

The billionaire also took aim at monopolistic technology and social media companies, which "while once liberating, are now socially damaging". He said that the power to "shape people's minds" now lies in the hands of a few companies, and that those without freedom of mind can be easily manipulated. In another attack on Trump, Soros pointed to the 2016 presidential elections as an example of this.

[...]

One solution would be a "multi-track" approach to EU membership, in which member states are free to form coalitions of the willing to pursue particular goals in which they agree.

The EU should also drop the requirement for member states to adopt the euro, Soros said, as "I would like to see Britain remain a member of the EU or eventually rejoin it, and that couldn't happen if it meant adopting the euro".

George Soros knows infinitely more about finance than I do, but I think the idea of the Euro was not such a bad one. The problem was that it was not applied equally to all members. That's one of the things that caused Greece to fall. A euro from a Greek bank was not equivalent in strength and favor as a euro from a German bank. Greece's once finance minister who quit once Greece's president decided to go along with the EU austerity proram, does know as much - and maybe more - about finance than George Soros, and this is what he had to say:

Varoufakis: Well, imagine if in the United States you treated people from Arizona as non-Americans or as people that must fend for themselves and whose banking system is their own problem. Then you wouldn't be having the United States of America.

Brancaccio: And that's the conundrum that Europe is still in. It didn't fix it.

Varoufakis: Indeed, we created the common currency, but did not create everything else which is necessary not to make the common currency a place of shared prosperity.

[...]

Brancaccio: Just so we know a piece of the story, what did the finance minister of Germany want to do but his chancellor wouldn't let them do?

Varoufakis: Wolfgang Schaeuble, decades ago, was a committed federalist, but a combination of Angela Merkel — who usurped him and effectively stole, that's in his view, the prime ministership, the chancellorship from him, as well as the French, did not want a proper federation.

They wanted all the benefits from a common currency, but without the obligations of a federal democratic political system. Schaeuble was against that. But over the years, he became a cynical man, using the finance ministry to do that which he would have wanted to do as the chancellor of Germany.

  Marketplace

Whining baby at Davos - Update

The Guardian has the clip, and the "boos" are apparent.  Although, they sound more like groans.  At any rate, it bugs me when people jump on the shitshow bandwagon with headlines meant to appeal to our emotions rather than our sense.  That plays right into the game.  This shit belongs in the Roman Colosseum, not in the news.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  A reasonable synopsis of Trump's performance.

Whining Baby at Davos

Ignore the headline on this Independent article, because it's absolutely misleading, if not outright "fake". But listen to the clip. It could have been at a Trump campaign rally. The cheers just weren't as loud.

Notice at the end of the clip that he pulls out the same lie he used at his rallies: that the cameras were being turned off, implying the press won't cover him when he's telling the truth about them.

He's apparently at Davos, a world economic forum, trying to make the whole world into his anti-press buddies.

The article headline that he was booed is going around Twitter. Don't fall for it. There's no need to make him seem worse than he is, because he's awful. I don't know who his audience is here, but whoever it was, they were encouraging him with cheers and applause. (And even if there had been audible booing, how could you know they weren't booing the press in agreement with him?  Certainly they did at his campaign rallies.) There's one tweet from reporter Ishaan Thoor saying foreign journalists near him booed. Apparently, that's where the Independent decided to take its headline and make a splash.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  The Guardian has the clip, and the "boos" are apparent.  Although, they sound more like groans.  At any rate, it bugs me when people jump on the shitshow bandwagon with headlines meant to appeal to our emotions rather than our sense.  That plays right into the game.  This shit belongs in the Roman Colosseum, not in the news.

UPDATE:  A reasonable synopsis of Trump's performance.

Come out fighting

Speaking at a panel with other U.S. government officials during the World Economic Forum in Davos, [Transportation Secretary and Mitch McConnell's wife Elaine Chao] praised the president for engaging with global leaders on economic policy by becoming the first sitting president in nearly two decades to attend the annual gathering of the world's wealthy elite.

“Davos should feel very flattered that he has chosen this as a forum,” Chao said during a session moderated by The Wall Street Journal. “Those who don’t want to listen to him can leave.”

  Politico

Like it or lump it, peasants.  Nothing like going to a forum for global elite economic unification with your back up before it even gets started.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump railed against free-trade agreements supported by many global economic leaders, a message he has reiterated as president.

Chao, speaking alongside House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, also brushed aside claims that Trump entering the White House has diminished the U.S. standing as a global leader.

[...]

The transportation secretary also addressed the importance of the United States' diplomatic relationship with China. Borrowing the term “frenemy” to characterize the dynamic, Chao said while there were ample opportunities for the two countries to cooperate, they remain competitors in many other regards.

“There are issues that we can work with them on. There are issues that we need their help on. And we all know what those issues are,” she said. “And there will be other issues that we will be in competition.

Chao added: “With this major player transforming itself, it is creating tensions, and we have to readjust as to how we interact with one another.”

There are those who think Elaine Chao is a Chinese plant, and I have to say, I could easily be convinced of it. After all, who else would marry Mitch McConnell?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

It appears that indeed some attendees - members of the Business Leadership of  South Africa -have already stated they would boycott Trump's address on Friday to protest his remarks about "shithole countries."  Why do I think Elaine Chao would particularly be happy to have Africans "leave"?

It would actually be pretty awesome if the entire forum met elsewhere during that time period without telling the Americans.  Some day.  After we've completely destroyed our standing in the world and reduced ourselves to the equivalent of today's North Korea.

Lucky Brits

We only wish protests would keep him out of our country.

Bloomberg revealed that Trump complained in a phone call to May about the "negative coverage" he has received in the British press.

[Theresa] May told the US president that that was how the UK media operated and she could do little to change it.

Trump went on to say that he would not visit the UK unless there were guarantees that he would not be met with protests.

Advisers who had been listening to the phone call are reported to have been "astonished" at the demands.

[...]

The president had been billed to open the new US embassy in London in February but cancelled the trip citing his displeasure at its "off location" in south London.

The old embassy in Grosvenor Square was deemed a major security headache that could not be fixed, which meant a new building had to be put up somewhere else in London. It was eventually decided to relocate it to a more secure location, just a few miles away in the Vauxhall area.

  IB Times

Little Lord Lard Ass. 

Reports were that he once demanded a ride in the royal gold carriage. 

When Trump upended the world order by winning the presidency in November 2016, few leaders felt the vibrations as much as May. The soon-to-be U.S. president had supported Brexit and suggested making his supporter and her political rival, anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage, the new British ambassador to Washington.

Her officials dismissed it. Matters worsened when it emerged that Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, May’s co-chiefs of staff, had publicly ridiculed Trump as “a chump” on Twitter before they entered government and urged their colleagues to shun his team. The pair set off on a secret trip to the U.S. to rescue the alliance. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson followed and soon after May arranged to visit the U.S.

Trump was clearly pleased with the idea. “She’ll be my Maggie,” he reportedly told his aides, referring to Reagan and Thatcher.

In London, Hill was especially keen to keep Trump close. She argued that a strong alliance with America was just what Britain needed in order to make a success of Brexit. The prospect of accelerating a trade agreement with the U.S. was a major goal for the U.K.

Hill and Timothy planned May’s trip to the White House and took up the idea of offering the president a state visit in return, the highest honor that Britain can give a foreign leader. It would involve the president and first lady staying with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and attending a state banquet in his honor. May's team believed such treatment would appeal to Trump's vanity.

  Bloomberg

It would have. But the Brits weren't so keen on it. And the queen probably had horror flashbacks of Dubya Bush's visit.

But, for now, Old Lard Ass is off to Davos amongst the richest of the rich.  He may not know that the Swiss don't want him either.



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

When does Himself leave for Davos?

Protesters took to the streets in two Swiss cities on Tuesday ahead of President Trump’s visit to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

Reuters reports nearly 20 anti-capitalist protesters broke through a security barrier in Davos while shouting “Wipe out WEF.” The protesters rallied around slogans such as “Trump Not Welcome” and “Smash WEF!”

[...]

In Zurich, 2,000 protesters marched toward the city’s financial district, carrying banners reading “No Trump, no coal, no gas, no fossil fuels” and “Dump Trump.

[...]

Trump is expected to give remarks Friday at the meeting of business leaders and global elites.

[...]

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday that Trump will present an “America First” agenda at the forum.

  The Hill

Further endearing him to the world in a high-profile setting.

Knowing his dislike of spending nights far from home, maybe he won't leave until the last minute. Also, Melania isn't going, so he might not want that to be so obvious. Hey, I know...why not take his real first lady and preferred mate, Ivanka?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.