Davos reacts to Trump: Greenland bid and coercion fears (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I'm seeking immediate negotiations to once again discuss the acquisition of Greenland by the United States. 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. They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States, remember that.

[00:00:25] Speaker 2: Hello, the highly anticipated speech to world leaders by Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos has happened. He delivered it mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Wednesday, the 21st of January. The big takeaway from it is that he said he would not use military force to, in his words, acquire Greenland. So it feels like lots of world leaders have sort of given a bit of a sigh of relief about that, although there's a question about whether he was ever going to use military force. But he also said he would like to start immediate negotiations with Denmark to get the territory. So he is definitely still got a lust for obtaining Greenland as American territory. So we will discuss what everyone is interpreting from this speech and what else he said and what it means for the rapidly collapsing world order on this episode of newscast. Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.

[00:01:18] Speaker 3: Hi, it's Katrina in the newscast studio in Washington.

[00:01:22] Speaker 2: And we will be joined shortly by Faisal, who is in Davos at the World Economic Forum with lots of prime ministers, lots of finance bros, lots of tech bros and a few presidents, one in particular. And hopefully he will be joining us at some point. But we're not exactly sure where he is as we're recording this episode of newscast on Wednesday at about 6.30 in the evening. Katrina, before we head virtually to Davos, though, Donald Trump's been on a sort of one year anniversary of being president tour this week, hasn't he?

[00:01:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's been a year, but if depending on your perspective, it's either been a whirlwind or a lifetime, right? So yesterday he was at the White House. He joined the press briefing, spoke for an hour and a half or thereabouts, a big long sort of rambling Donald Trump classic hit speech at the start. And then he took a lot of questions from those gathered there. And you can imagine chief among them were his recent comments on Greenland, Greenland, NATO, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, take your pick, really. Then he went from there, back to the West Wing for a bit, then went to get on his plane to fly to Davos. The plane took off from Joint Base Andrews had what we're told was a technical fault. So I had to fly back to Joint Base Andrews and then get on a different plane. So there's a delay of about three hours or so. So then he's landed in Davos today, more or less went straight from the plane to the World Economic Forum to deliver yet another really long speech followed by a Q&A there, which really has been quite remarkable. The whole of Davos and much of the world as well is kind of a gog at some of what he said in that speech.

[00:02:59] Speaker 2: And also the speech that he did on Tuesday night in the White House press briefing room, he was accompanied with a pile of laminated kind of bad guy top trumps. And he was leafing through it going, here's somebody we deported. Here's a murderer that we deported. Here's somebody that we sent back to their home country. That was his sort of theme of his remarks on Tuesday night, wasn't it?

[00:03:18] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how he began them. And he was holding up, as you say, these pictures and they're similar pictures to ones they used to have actually on big signs in the driveway in the White House, right where we stand doing live hits. Actually, they had all those people's photographs there on big pegs in the garden. Yeah, a few months ago. So now he had them on laminates, holding them up and reading out kind of what their crimes was. And he even said to the gathered journalists at one point, are you getting bored by this, perhaps suggesting that he was getting bored holding up these laminates. Then he took out a big pile of paper, which is his three hundred and fifty odd wins for every day of the year last year. It was held together by one of those butterfly clips, which kind of snapped in his finger. And he made a joke about that. And then he said, these are all my achievements. And then through that stack of paper on the floor, which was another remarkable moment before he then kind of basically read them all out from a script he had in front of him.

[00:04:14] Speaker 2: As someone who spent many years holding up binders of paper on television, I have a bit of sympathy for handling all the paperwork in a high pressure situation. Right. We're still waiting for Faisal. But let's just dig into the analysis of what's been happening in Davos. And actually, Katrina, that summary you gave of the speech you did on Tuesday night, actually, most of what he did in Davos today, or at least half of it was more of that, wasn't it? It wasn't all just like Greenland, Greenland, Greenland, like attack, attack, attack.

[00:04:40] Speaker 3: No. And, you know, that speech actually in Davos was supposed to be about housing and focusing on the US economy. And there was a little bit of that as well, because we're told that's what President Trump's going to focus on now in his second year ahead of the midterm elections here, because there have been a lot of polls out here recently that the American people are getting quite tired of his focus on foreign policy matters when the cost of living here is such a big issue, prices aren't coming down, fuel prices are coming down, but most everything else isn't. So he did touch on that a little bit. But also, he spoke a lot about Greenland. He called it Iceland a couple of times, actually.

[00:05:19] Speaker 1: They're not there for us in Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland.

[00:05:27] Speaker 3: He again touted the various wars that he says he has solved, although he called Azerbaijan, Aber-Baijan or a version of that. And he also went on to kind of insult a lot of people in the room. The room was almost silent for the entirety of his speech as he picked off different leaders to either insult them or threaten them. And it was quite a remarkable speech. It reminds me in a way of when the Vice President J.D. Vance went to the Munich Security Conference last year, coming into Europe like that to lecture European leaders. And it was a very similar thing to that, where President Trump told them what a bad job they were doing with their countries and how basically if they followed his lead, they'd be a lot better. And he was making things better for everyone.

[00:06:10] Speaker 2: Right, Faisal's here now. Or when I say here, he's actually in Davos. Hello, Faisal. Hello. I'm not accusing you of being late, but where have you been?

[00:06:21] Speaker 4: We started without you. I've been really late. And I've been meeting someone. I can't tell you who it is. Oh, it's a bit like that. I will tell you some of what this person said in a minute because it is relevant. Okay, I can't tell you because that's how it kind of things roll in this place. You get to meet like really senior people who I won't name who tell you what Donald Trump has been saying privately. Oh, we'll park that for a little bit.

[00:06:44] Speaker 2: Can you tell us what genre of person it was?

[00:06:48] Speaker 4: No, because then when I mentioned someone silently who spoke to me, then you'll work out who it is. So we're going to forget about that for about five minutes hypnotically. Then we'll come back to it.

[00:06:58] Speaker 2: Right, we'll park that little murder mystery party element of today's podcast until later on. Right, so Faisal, we'll dig into the contents of Donald Trump's speech in a second. Katrina had started doing that for us. But just give us a bit of a vibe check about what this day was like when Donald Trump kind of avalanched into Davos, the ski resort in Switzerland.

[00:07:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Avalanche is my favourite kind of analogy. I came up with like High Sheriff coming into town with his own rules, set of rules. And one of the interesting things was that he sort of telegraphed what we thought he was going to say beforehand. And everyone had preemptively reacted to that. And it was a dark place. And did that in fact, change the content and tone of his speech. The tone of the tone that I detected in the room, and Katrina is totally 100% right about all of that, from her vantage point, is that this phrase passive aggressive, or maybe aggressive passive. To be honest, people use it and they don't really know what it means. But like, if you want to know what it means, I think that that's what Donald Trump's speech was. Why do I say that? Because it was, in one way, diplomatic and meant to mellow and chill people. It was a bit like that at the beginning. And there was a little bit of praise. And there was a little bit of applause that was reciprocated right at the beginning. But then it sort of meandered and ranged, it got a little bit menacing, and then he rode back and then it got a little bit more menacing. So it depends on your view. And you just take the Greenland issue, he starts off saying, Oh, we are Americans. We love you. We saved America so long ago, we gave it back to you. And you think he's about to say, and you can just have it. But then it's like, no, we're never going to invade. And then he says, but we definitely still want it. And basically, it's ours. Now, take your pick. The sort of consensus here is that he has rode back. I just saw Governor Gavin Newsom. I spoke to him. He says it's Taco Tuesday, although it's Wednesday. He has chickened out again. Others had a different perspective on it. That's well, actually, it's still hanging there, isn't it? He still wants it. That is still very, very weird and strange. So, you know, it couldn't be interpreted in different ways. Some relief. But like, what I'm going to give you a quote from my mystery source, G7 leader, who knows what he's going to say tomorrow. That's what that's what was said. And amid the jokes, and this is the other thing, is you get the sort of jokes and humor, and then suddenly everyone gets really serious and think this is absolutely insane and deeply serious. Or is it a joke? It is absolutely baffling, bewildering, head spinning. And almost everybody walking around has that sort of sort of vibe, because you don't know whether you're up or down sideways.

[00:09:54] Speaker 2: Well, you know what, let's listen to the key clip from Donald Trump's speech, which was very long and very rambling and covered lots of things. But this is the bit about Greenland, where he basically says he does not want to use force to, in his words, acquire the territory. This is how he put it.

[00:10:08] Speaker 1: 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, now everyone's saying, Oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland.

[00:10:37] Speaker 2: Now Katrina, and Faisal has already alluded to this, that is being interpreted around the globe as Oh, okay, everyone stand down. There's not gonna be some kind of military confrontation within NATO. But actually, you look at what other members of the administration have said about this before, for example, JD Vance, he says, we wouldn't need to do a military intervention to get Greenland because no one would dare stand up to us. We could just take it non militarily. So in that sense, we're we're one step forward one step back.

[00:11:03] Speaker 3: Yeah, I would read something different into what President Trump said today. He absolutely did say I won't use force. But he also said, we want a piece of ice for world protection, and they won't give it I Denmark, you can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no. And we will remember. And many other times in the speech, he referred to Greenland or Iceland, but he meant Greenland as being in our hemisphere, our territory. It's part of North America. I don't see you know, maybe I'm wrong. But I've been watching Donald Trump for a very long time now. And again, when you put it together, what the rest of his team are saying, I'm not sure if I was sitting in Denmark or Greenland, I would be taking any kind of salve from what he said there is at all he very resolutely set out the case that he wants Greenland, and he is going to have Greenland. And he might have said not by force, but that always was a big question mark. Anyway, there is a US military base on Greenland. You know, one now there were 17. At one point, there's a very close defense arrangement there. The US doesn't really need force to take over Greenland. I mean, how does the world react if the military and maybe accompanied by Pete Hegseth or Marco Rubio or the president himself walk up the main street and nuke or up to a building their administrative building with the American flag and say we're in control now? What are they actually going to do about that? It's kind of he would just claim it and put it up to others to defend it. And he'd be into a Cold War type situation where you'd have warships surrounding the world's biggest island. And what happens next?

[00:12:42] Speaker 2: So Faisal, do you get the sense that lots of the other leaders at Davos have been confronting? Well, basically a straw man, which is the idea of a military invasion of Greenland. And actually, that's never been on the cards. And actually, maybe they're guilty of a bit of a bit of an optimism bias by thinking that he's dialed down the rhetoric. When actually his thirst for Greenland is stronger than ever.

[00:13:06] Speaker 4: There's a bit of that. There's a bit of unreality. There's a bit of wishful thinking, there's a bit of assuming that the worst case scenario is so absurd and so damaging that it can't possibly happen. But I think the best way to judge this will be what happens tomorrow in terms of the European Union, who kind of have this emergency summit. And I think why that's interesting is that they've readied or they may ready this kind of bazooka type counter tariff instrument. I don't quite understand fully how it works. But apparently, it's very, very, very serious. And it's meant to send a message. And I think the wider point, which is really very interesting, was that Donald Trump, did Donald Trump respond in this mellowing, not mellowing? Katrina, I think maybe right here. So forgive me if I hedge my bets. Did he respond to the speeches we heard the day before? Mark Carney saying the rest of the world's going to get together now. Emmanuel Macron saying bullying and new colonialism, this can't be allowed, we're going to stop it. And then does that create a blueprint for how to, and I'm going to put this verb very carefully, manage Donald Trump? If you like to sort of pop his bubble, to kind of distinguish the Donald Trump, who tweets and writes stuff that sound menacing, and potentially involves the violent invasion of a sovereign ally. And the Donald Trump that turns up here almost trying to hug everybody, sort of. I mean, it is bewildering. You're asking me to psychologically analyse not just Donald Trump, but the entire leadership of the world. And I'm going to say, I don't know.

[00:14:50] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, admirable effort. And sorry, I gave you such a big impossible task. But you know what, let's hear the bit of Trump's speech where he took aim at Mark Carney. And Mark Carney did this big speech on Tuesday night in Davos, which got lots of acclaim around the world where he basically said, like, you can't, you can't have nostalgia for the old way of doing things, middle sized countries just need to get real and live in the world as it is and act accordingly. And then got this response today from Donald Trump.

[00:15:15] Speaker 1: Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way, they should be grateful also, but they're not. I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

[00:15:33] Speaker 2: And Katrina, that's a reference there to the fact that Donald Trump wants to build this big new missile defence system called the Golden Dome, a little reference to Israel's version of it was called the Iron Dome. And actually, again, plays into Greenland, because if you wanted to make a really, really good missile defence system for the continental United States, actually, you would probably want to put kit in Greenland.

[00:15:56] Speaker 3: Indeed, and even talking about that, he insulted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well saying, you know, when you talk about your Iron Dome, it's not yours, it's actually ours, it's our technology and so on. So there almost wasn't a person that he didn't insult during that speech there. But I mean, I thought it was quite threatening to Mark Carney, the Prime Minister of Canada, you know, Canada lives because of the US, you should remember that the next time you make your statements. I mean, that's just an extraordinary thing to say on a world stage. I mean, I looked up at one stage at all our we've got TV screens monitoring all the networks here in the US and international channels. Everyone was taking Donald Trump live. So the audience that that speech got was remarkable. And he's issuing those sorts of threats to his neighbours. Another key part with the relationship with Canada is the US Mexico Canada trade agreement, which he's basically said, you know, he doesn't need he doesn't really care whether it's renegotiated or not by the end of this year. And so you have Mark Carney ferociously travelling around the globe since he came into office, trying to find new partnerships for Canada to move away from that dependency on the US. So I mean, whatever way you look at it, is there a way back from what we've seen in the last few days? Is it the end of the world order? As we know, it can any of this trust ever be rebuilt? It seems very hard to see how it can be.

[00:17:17] Speaker 2: And Faisal, just you referred to the EU's big bazooka, which is their new anti economic coercion instrument, which was put into European law a couple of years ago, but it's never been used yet. And it's a sort of batch of sort of super sanctions that could be imposed much more quickly than the normal kind of World Trade Organization compliant sanctions that we've become used to, and also can be applied for different reasons. So rather than retaliation against another country, putting the tariffs on your products, you could do it because of a country's kind of behaviour by being sort of menaced or bullied by them. But I've noticed quite a few people talking about how another tool that the world has to coerce America in return, which is buying and selling or refusing to buy American government debt. Just explain to us how, what the conversation around that is, and whether that's the sort of realistic thing that could ever happen? Is that a way of getting at Donald Trump through the world financial system?

[00:18:16] Speaker 4: Yeah, it's seen as a sort of outlier, can't really happen, unless you think about it really carefully. And you look at the numbers. And yes, Europe does own $8 trillion worth of US financial assets. It's just never ever been a sort of terrible development in the relationship between Europe and the US that would see the contemplation of deploying that as a weapon. Never ever, up until now. We did hear some sense of maybe the Japanese using this as a weapon. It was a bit of a shock then in April under the tariff war. It's always been the sense that the Chinese might use this similar thing as a form of leverage. But I think what was really telling was that Scott Besson kind of rather aggressively said, this is not a problem. This is not a problem. This is not a problem. That made me start to think, oh, this might actually be a problem.

[00:19:09] Speaker 2: Because he's acknowledging the Treasury Secretary, acknowledging it as a concept.

[00:19:15] Speaker 4: Yes, well, and not just that, he kept on saying it so much that I now think, what do you call this? A Streisand effect? You know, they now think that I'm now thinking it may well be a problem. He went this far, actually, he went so far as to phone up the chief executive of Deutsche Bank, whose researcher had decided this might be an issue, like completely normal thing to do, and was brandishing some sort of note or letter from him saying, no, no, no, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. We now think, okay, there's something to this. But listen, I on the European Union and the response, there's a, I didn't give you a tiny bit of scoop from sources that I can't name, that I haven't referred to previously, on the European Union. And what's happening here in Davos tomorrow with Donald Trump, because he's setting up his board of peace. And it's a bit odd, right. But what I found out, and you may have just deduced this, is that he started trying to appoint various characters to it. It's meant to be about Gaza, it's meant to be about saving lives. But from what I've heard, Europe is boycotting it. Now, we haven't heard that they're going to join, but I haven't heard that there's been an active boycott of it. Nobody, there's one country that is not holding the line. I think that's Orban in Hungary. But they basically said no. And the reason I hear from good sources is that they will not join a private club for global security. That is very, very, very interesting to hear that that is the response. So if you like the transatlantic rancor does not end with Greenland. We also have this issue. And that's happening tomorrow. Donald Trump wants to start this board of peace. Some people think that it's a competitor to the United Nations. The Europeans are not happy with this. And you heard it first on newscast.

[00:21:01] Speaker 2: Well, Katrina, we're setting up a quite potentially quite odd event then with this board of peace being unveiled, where maybe the only members of it who are fully signed up are the presidents of Russia and Belarus.

[00:21:13] Speaker 3: Indeed, and we've also heard now haven't we that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been invited to join. In fact, the White House said they've been they sent out 50 invitations, and they're expecting about 30 people to sign up to it tomorrow. So we'll wait and see how many of those signatures are actually inked on that document. But while that's happening, and the big EU meeting is happening, you also have, of course, Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner in Moscow, meeting President Putin. And you have President Zelensky now ferociously making his way from Ukraine to Davos to meet President Trump tomorrow as well. So tomorrow is one of those days where you kind of need to be able to multiple locate yourself to be keeping a track of all these meetings that potentially are so consequential for the world we live in.

[00:22:03] Speaker 2: Yes, very well put. Faisal, just before we all go, I'm going to play a little excerpt of your appearance on the six o'clock news on BBC One at tea time, where you were doing some excellent analysis. And then you were interrupted very rudely by an incredibly loud motorcade. And it sounded like this.

[00:22:19] Speaker 4: I think you can hear the sirens. That's the President, I think, leaving. But should that be taken seriously? Was the real news today that there will be no invasion, as he said, or was the news in fact, that he wants to acquire Greenland? Time will tell.

[00:22:42] Speaker 3: We'll leave it there.

[00:22:42] Speaker 2: Faisal Islam in Davos. 12 out of 10 for handling a situation live on air. Well done. But I think, Faisal, what that for me sums up is just the insanity or the craziness or the intensity of this meeting in Davos, which feels a bit like being in a sort of like washing machine of news.

[00:23:01] Speaker 4: Washing machine, tumble dryer, jet engine. Honestly, I need to sleep and there's some snow there and I might go and fall into it. But that's what we do. That's what we have to do. We have to try and explain. Some of the stuff is inexplicable, to be honest. But as I said, it sounds a bit cheesy, but it did feel like being a witness to history. And so that's why we do it. That's why occasionally we even have to shout above wailing sirens. Have you seen Katy Perry?

[00:23:31] Speaker 1: No.

[00:23:31] Speaker 4: Oh, no. That's a reference I don't quite understand, is it? It's not a reference. She's there. She's there with her new beau, Justin Trudeau. Hang on. No. So I thought that was some clever Adam reference. I'll tell you who we did see. We saw Matt Damon and we asked Matt Damon what he thought about Donald Trump. And he said, I'm not going to talk about Donald Trump. I'm here to talk about water.

[00:23:58] Speaker 2: So that's the true scoop. I would have said, I would have said, is Donald Trump here hunting for goodwill?

[00:24:05] Speaker 3: But oh, bum, bum.

[00:24:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, you're you're far smoother than I am. Maybe a good job. I'm a good job. I'm not. And also you take your hang on. Can I just have to I just have to stress this one thing. There's a gilet I'm wearing, which you often take the Michael out of that. It's unnecessary. And I would just like to put on record for all newscasters. This gilet is utterly necessary. And Adam, I think an apology is in order.

[00:24:31] Speaker 2: I'm not anti gilet. I'm just pro gilet in the right context. And this is an example of that. Faisal, thank you very much. I'm going to let you curl up in the bank of snow. Katrina, I'm going to let you go and just carry on your lifetime sentence of monitoring what Donald Trump is saying. And we'll catch up again soon.

[00:24:48] Speaker 3: It is also minus eight degrees here today. So it's pretty chilly as well.

[00:24:53] Speaker 2: See you all soon. And as those two depart, I'm just going to pick up on something Faisal said, which is called the Streisand effect, which is one of my favorite effects, which is Barbara Streisand, famous pop star and actress. She complained about footage being broadcast of her home because she's a very private person. But by doing so, she drew everyone's attention to her home and where it was. And so the Streisand effect is used when people say, oh, leave me alone. But the consequence of saying it is that they get more grief. Also, it's the subject of one of my favourite books, which is Barbara Streisand's My Passion for Design, which is a big coffee table book about how she designed her house, which includes a mock Victorian street in the basement, which includes a shop dedicated just to wrapping presents. Right. That's all for this episode of Newscast. We've covered a lot of ground and we'll be back with another one very soon. Bye bye.

[00:25:44] Speaker 1: Transcribed by https://otter.ai