The circus that is Davos

This week, the best comedy show in the world is taking place in Davos, Switzerland, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

The dictionary defines comedy as entertainment consisting of jokes and satirical sketches, intended to make an audience laugh. I’m not sure that the program and its producers intended for the event to be a comedy, but watching it from afar was truly entertaining, on the one hand, and scary as hell, on the other.

Let’s deal with the entertaining portion first. The star of the show for sure was Wednesday’s hallucinatory performance by President Trump who spoke for close to 90 minutes to a standing-room-only audience of over 1,000, with many more watching off-site, given the limited number of seats in the main auditorium.

Clearly, everyone in the room was anxiously waiting to hear more about the push by the US to acquire ownership of Greenland and Trump did not disappoint. For him, as it became obvious by the end of the day, all of the talk about Greenland was simply a diversion so that the press would stop talking about the still-not-fully-released Epstein files, the illegal invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, the Gestapo-like tactics of ICE agents in Minneapolis and other locations, as well as the fact that millions of Americans have seen their health insurance costs double and triple this year because of the unwillingness of the US Congress to extend the earlier premium discounts of the Affordable Care Act.

During his speech, the president affirmed what so many of us predicted over the last weeks he would do — namely, that America’s threat to do whatever it can to take ownership of Greenland was never serious. Trump made it clear in his speech that America would not use force to invade Greenland, but that if Denmark did not give it up peacefully, America “would remember that,” to quote Trump.

For some reason or other, he could not correctly remember the name Greenland, and he referred to it as “Iceland” four times during the speech. After NewsNation reporter Libbey Dean posted on X that during his Davos remarks, Trump “appeared to mix up Greenland and Iceland around three times,” White House Press Secretary Leavitt issued a fiery response: “No, he didn’t, Libby,” she wrote, misspelling Dean’s first name. “His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.” Talk about lying to protect your boss…. It doesn’t get any worse than this.

Later in the day, Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, after which Trump reported, when queried by a reporter, that the threatened tariffs Trump wanted to impose on European countries that were against America’s attempt to take control of Greenland, had been lifted because, again in Trump’s words, “We have the concept of a deal.”

It is important to note here that Trump has been talking about taking over Greenland for six and a half years in the name of American security needs even though the US has the right to have as many military installations as it desires on the island as codified in agreements signed in 1951. At one point, America had 17 such installations in Greenland but had decommissioned 16 of them over the years. Still, nothing stands in the way of rebuilding those with no need to “own” the island. One can only wonder when the details of the “deal” will be made public and if they will be any different than what has already been in place for 75 years. My guess is they will not be any different at all.

And then there was the hallucinatory soliloquy on bringing down drug prices. For many minutes, Trump regaled the audience with a conversation he purportedly had with Emmanuel Macron of France in which he told Macron that France needed to double or even triple their drug prices so that the cost of prescription drugs in the US could be lowered to meet the increased prices of those same drugs in Europe. Trump related at length how Macron resisted this effort until Macron finally relented so that, in Trump’s words, “US drug prices could be reduced by 90% or even 400% of 500%, depending on how the calculation is made.”

Of course, one can never reduce prices of anything more than 100%, but Trump may have missed that class at the Wharton School when he was a student there, as he has been parroting this line for some months now. But even more important to note is that Macron does not have the authority to set drug prices in France. Those prices are controlled there, as in most countries in the world, by a government agency responsible for such activities.

The French government was quick to deny the existence of any such agreement and used Trump’s favorite words to describe the incident as “fake news” in a GIF posted on X which can be seen here:

It’s being claimed that President @EmmanuelMacron increased the price of medicines.

He does not set their prices. They are regulated by the social security system and have, in fact, remained stable. Anyone who has set foot in a French pharmacy knows this. pic.twitter.com/xoNrhkKyUP

— Élysée (@Elysee) January 21, 2026

The post shows a picture of Trump with the words “Fake News” coming in and out of the screen over his face and an accompanying text that said: “It’s being claimed that President Marcon increased the price of medicines. He does not set their prices. They are regulated by the social security system and have, in fact, remained stable. Anyone who has set foot in a French pharmacy knows this.”

Trump further claimed incorrectly that the conversation with Macron took just three minutes and that he had similar conversations with other European heads of state and each one took just three minutes. None of this is seemingly supported by facts.

What was really surprising is that no doubt a large number of the 1,000+ people in that room were well aware that much of what Trump was saying was simply not true. Yet no one walked out, he was given a large round of applause at the end, and then welcomed by the master of ceremonies to sit for a few minutes afterwards and take questions from the emcee. In many respects, the conduct of the audience, while it may be seen as respectful by some, could be seen as being guilty of their being enablers, silently encouraging or patronizing the hallucinatory speaker.

Of course, what was seen on Wednesday followed Tuesday’s presentations where heads of state took significant jabs at the US and threatened their own counter-offensives to perceived irresponsible American diplomacy.

What should frighten everyone is that as long as this is all talk and the only result of the talk is that people get frustrated and plan what they see as retaliatory action, the world may get through all of this, somehow or other. However, if someone makes a mistake, if someone takes an action that is violent or results in death and destruction, a real World War III could easily be ignited that would release all the pent-up frustration and result in mutual devastation. It would just take one spark to create worldwide chaos.

No doubt Putin in Russia and Xi in China are watching all of this with glee. They could not have asked for a better result than to have NATO self-implode and the Americans be perceived as weak and fragmented.

Davos is certainly a circus this week — but scary rather than simply entertaining.