By Betsey Piette
January 28, 2026

While U.S. President Donald Trump’s over an hour-long rambling rant at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21 provided ample fodder for late-night talk show hosts’ comedic content, Trump’s fascistic, fact-free speech was no laughing matter.

Trump’s retreat from his latest tariff threats on European allies opposing the U.S. takeover of Greenland led to initial relief for some imperialist U.S. allies, until he quickly followed up with threats of a possible U.S. pullback from the 76-year-old North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and directed pointed attacks on the leaders of Denmark, France and Canada.

Referring to Greenland as Iceland multiple times, Trump boldly announced that he reached a deal with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte over the U.S. taking control over the island nation, known as Kalaallit Nunaat to its 89% majority Indigenous population. While claiming there was an agreement reached on the expansion of U.S. military bases and access to mineral rights there, Trump’s problem is that NATO has no authority to make any economic agreement concerning Greenland.

Trump’s Davos remarks appeared to be a declaration of U.S. hegemony not just over the Western Hemisphere, but beyond.  They marked an abandonment of U.S. support for its imperialist allies in the European Union and Canada, warning that countries refusing U.S. demands would be “remembered.”  Trump repeatedly referenced the U.S. military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores on Jan. 3 as an example of what the U.S. would do if countries didn’t go along.

His vitriolic verbiage left many in the audience, composed of leading global business and political figures and global bankers, sitting in stunned silence.

What Trump said at Davos does not bear repeating, but some statements clearly stood out – mostly for exposing how divorced from reality Trump truly is. His rants were a fact-checker’s nightmare.

Trump repeatedly bragged about “improvements” he had made to the U.S. economy in just 12 months since taking office in January 2025.  He claimed that “car plants are moving back to the U.S. … Japan’s coming in and building plants here … they’re coming from China … More [car] plants that we’ve ever had built, even in the heyday from the 1940s and 1950s.” (Transcript from the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Jan. 21)

The reality is that while some major, long-term construction plans for new auto factories in the U.S. are in the works, their focus has been on opening up massive electronic vehicle battery facilities by expanding existing sites. If there is any factory expansion going on in the U.S., it involves expanding artificial intelligence facilities.

Trump claimed that in 2025 he reduced inflation, lowered prices, and raised the income level of U.S. workers.  Saying he “lifted more than 1.2 million people off of food stamps,” Trump neglected to acknowledge that “lift” was due to eligibility restrictions in his ‘Big Bad Budget’ bill, which pushed people off the SNAP program.

Fortune.com reported that while Fortune 500 corporate companies made record profits of $1.87 trillion in 2024, U.S. workers’ share of the country’s economic output decreased to its lowest levels since the Bureau of Labor Standards started recording this data in 1947. (Jan. 13)

One of Trump’s strangest divergent rants was to suggest that if prescription drug prices in France would double or triple, then the cost for these drugs in the U.S. would drop by 90%, “you could also say 800%.” While offering no explanation of how drug prices in the U.S. and France were connected, he threatened a 100% tariff on French wines and champagnes if France’s President Emmanuel Macron didn’t agree to take this step. (WEF, Jan. 21)

While most of the imperialist delegates withheld applause from Trump, noticeably none of them walked out in protest of his promotion of the fascistic Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) occupation of U.S. cities, most prominently Minneapolis, where thousands of workers of color have been rounded up for detention, and to date three U.S. citizens have been killed.

Nor did they challenge his racist rants blaming immigrants for economic problems in Europe and his attacks on Somali immigrants in Minneapolis who have been primary ICE targets.  Not one of the bosses, bankers or imperialist economists and politicians at Davos challenged or even criticized Trump’s white supremacist remarks.