Commentary by Stephen Macaulay
During the Donald Trump Q&A with a suite of bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos (he was in the U.S.; they weren’t), there were a number of comments made by the president that were they said by any other president would trigger warning sirens.
Know that these quotes are taken from the official White House transcript.
In response to a question regarding the EU regulatory regime, Trump talked about “a big project in Ireland” that he worked on during his “beautiful private life.” He said that when he learned that there would be a years-long delay to getting approval for his application from the EU:
“I realized right then, that’s a problem, and I didn’t even bother applying to do it, and — or if I did, I pulled it very quickly. I don’t wa- — I have to be very accurate, because I don’t want to be criticized -- ‘He did apply, actually.’ No, I want to be very accurate.
So, I don’t think I did, but if I did, I pulled it very quickly.”
He applied. No he didn’t apply. He might have applied. If he did apply, then he pulled it.
Now one might give him a pass because this happened when, he said, “I had a nice, simple life. You knew that.”
So he might not remember. (Who, incidentally, knew he had “a nice simple life”?)
But why use something he wasn’t clear about as an example?
And should a president, on a global stage, show his inability to, well, know what he’s talking about?
He then launched into a pout about the EU: “the EU treats us very, very unfairly, very badly. . .[E]ssentially, they don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars. Yet, they send cars to us by the millions.”
Let’s see. The EU buys some $10 billion in agricultural exports from the U.S.
Not nothing by any measure.
“They don’t take our cars.”
Let’s see. BMW builds its SUVs in South Carolina and ships them to Europe.
Ford has factories in Germany, Spain and Romania, so “They” are taking products from a US brand.
And, oh, his pal Elon’s Tesla Model Y was the eighth best-selling vehicle in the EU in 2024.
Then there’s this:
“They put tariffs on things that we want to do, like, for instance, I think they actually — in terms of these are noneconomic or nonmonetary tariffs, and — and those are very bad, and they make it very difficult to bring products into Europe, and yet they expect to be selling and they do sell their products in the United States.”
As the kids might put it: WTF?
During a discussion about energy, he got back to something that we haven’t heard about for a long time: “Good, clean coal.”
There is no such thing as “clean coal.”
At least not in the real world.
He criticized the “Green New Deal.” It is worth noting that the Green New Deal isn’t law, it was a resolution introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Edward Markey (D-MA).
Trump:
“I mean, the Green New Deal was such a total disgrace — what — what — how that was perpetrated. And it was conceived of by people that were average students — less than average students, I might add — and never even took a course in energy or the environment.”
Again: the President of the United States demeaning people because of their educational attainment. That’s a serious rhetorical move?
Consider: he has a B.S. in Economics. Ocasio-Cortez has a B.A. in International Relations and Economics. Markey has B.A. in Political Science and a J.D.
The people he criticizes are above average.
And how many courses in “energy or the environment” has he taken.”?
Then he moved on to criticizing Canada:
“We have a tremendous deficit with Canada. We’re not going to have that anymore. We can’t do it. It’s — it’s — I don’t know if it’s good for them. As you probably know, I say, “You can always become a state, and if you’re a state, we won’t have a deficit. We won’t have to tariff you, et cetera, et cetera.”
“But Canada has been very tough to deal with over the years, and it’s not fair that we should have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit. We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests, et cetera, et cetera. We don’t need their oil and gas. We have our — we have more than anybody.”
Actually, the trade deficit is about 25% of his lowest estimate. Some $45 billion. But it doesn’t matter. He can just make it up.
And why the deficit?
Mainly because the US buys lots of oil from Canada.
We do need their oil and gas.
And there’s something about the need that has nothing to do with what is happening north of the border but south of it: refineries in the US have been built to process the sour, heavy crude that comes from Canada. They just can’t presto-change-o switch to other types of oil.
We also need their electricity: 1.5 million US homes are supplied with electricity from Ontario.
Then after talking briefly about Mexico he swerved to “honestly, good things are going to happen for the world, and good things are going to happen for the people that are dealing with us — allies and beyond allies.”
“Beyond allies”?
After making that statement he said:
“One thing — very important — I really would like to be able to meet with President Putin soon and get that war end — ended, and — and that’s not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted. Beautiful, young people are being shot in the battlefield. You know, the bullet — a very flat land, as I said, and the bullet goes — there’s no — there’s no hiding. And a bullet — the only thing going to stop the bullet is a human body. And you have to see — I’ve seen pictures of what’s taken place. It’s a carnage.”
That defies analysis.
This is, again, the President of the United States speaking at one of the most consequential economic conferences on the planet.
Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings.
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What's Right -- Monday’s news/aggregate tackles the question of whether Donald J. Trump’s promise to Sean Hannity to be a dictator only on “Day One” is playing itself out as the 47th president races to wipe out any vestige of the Biden White House with stacks of executive orders signed with that fat Sharpie.
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Scroll down with the trackbar on the far right (not a political position in this case) to read other recent center-column news/aggregate/analysis and commentary from the right and left, including …
•Strong reaction to Trump’s pardons of more than 1,500 January 6th insurrectionists, and general public opposition to release of the most violent of those convicted.
•Right-column contributor Rich Corbett’s commentary above, “Pardons, Promises and Presidential Powers,” opposite Sharon Lintner’s left-column response, “Shocking FOP Support for Trump.”
•In the center column: Was DOGE chief Elon Musk’s “salute” to Trump supporters a Nazi salute, or something more innocuous?
•Pundit-at-Large Stephen Macaulay’s right column on the Trump inauguration; “Return of the Gilded Age?” opposite Hugh Hansen’s left column, “Inauguration to Avoid.”