And so the great American salesman-turned-statesman – truly the greatest, maybe ever… people say it all the time; there's never been another one like him and, frankly, there probably never will be – made his latest grab for Greenland and, at a gathering of the most powerful people in the world, simply folded.
Anne McElvoy was at Davos, in the room where it happened.
Donald Trump's cavalcade had "rolled into the Swiss Alps with his latest idée fixe for the business and tech titans and politicians – namely, that the US needs to 'have Greenland' under its full control in order to boost Arctic security against Russia and China threats".
But just as Europe stepped forward with its "new majority view that it needed to prepare for serious tariff retaliation", Trump backed off. The US will not be invading its Nato ally. Europe can breathe a sigh of relief that it will not be speaking American-English any time soon.
McElvoy writes that such "giddy events" serve as a reminder that, "in Trumpworld, anything can happen and then unhappen. As one Nordic foreign minister at Davos put it to me: 'I just want to get out of here.'" You can read her piece in full here.
Trump's muscular attempt to establish a new world order in his own image – less touchy-feely, more smashy-testes, in the vernacular of The Thick of It – has come under scrutiny from The Independent's team.
Victoria Richards warned that the US president, in his bizarre letter to the Norwegian prime minister – in which he whined that the Nobel committee's decision not to award him the peace prize meant "I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace" – was using the language of an abusive husband.
"It's straight out of the playbook of every single abusive partner," she wrote. "It bears all the hallmarks of coercion and verbal abuse. It even resembles the behaviour and language used by these types of men – word for word."
Before the president had even landed in Switzerland, Chris Blackhurst sensed that 'toddler' Trump was on the brink of completely losing it. "There is not a day – make that a couple of hours, seemingly – that goes by at present without him provoking a shockwave and sparking headlines."
As Sean O'Grady wondered why Trump treats his enemies better than his friends, Simon Walters asked whether a boycott of the US World Cup might see off the Trump bully: "A 2026 World Cup without the 16 European teams due to take part, including England, Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Scotland, is almost unimaginable. The winners would be world champions in name only. Equally, Trump's supporters would doubtless argue that if Europe withdrew from the World Cup, it would merely add sport to the continent's increasing economic, cultural, diplomatic and military irrelevance."
Sir Richard Shirreff, the retired senior British Army officer who served as Nato's deputy supreme allied commander (Europe), said it was time for Nato to go it alone without the Americans. "For decades, Europe outsourced its security to Washington and spent the dividend elsewhere. That era is over. Defence spending must rise – now, not in vague promises a decade hence. This is not solely about money; it is also about mindset."
Cometh the hour, cometh the diplomatic bollard. Throughout the Greenland affair, Keir Starmer has made it difficult for Trump to get his own way. "He's a fine exponent of the British art of understatement," Sean O'Grady said of the PM's emergency broadcast on Monday. "The prime minister spoke up on behalf of a country that is unusually united – even Nigel Farage is just about onside – in being shocked and appalled by Donald Trump's latest threats."
At least that's year one of Trump's second term done – just three to go.
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