MORNING GLORY: Trump uses Davos to showcase American strength and shake the global order
When President Donald Trump agreed to address the “World Economic Forum” in Davos, he rescued that gathering from looming irrelevance — at least for a year. If the President of the United States attends a forum, the world’s collective attention will turn to it.
The American public usually squints at this collection of would-be world big wigs — drawn from the world’s wealthiest, who are mostly not from our republic, but talking about it and how it and the world should work — and doesn’t like that look at all.
But President Trump came with some of his “A Team” on international economic and security matters, and Made Davos Great Again. People tuned in.
Two comments stood out to me. On the president’s desire to acquire Greenland, he did make one thing very clear: “I won’t use force.” That simple statement buoyed markets around the world which had imagined some sort of intra-NATO kinetic conflict and panicked on Tuesday. That’s not going to happen, though the president has made it very clear he will use all levers open to him. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative,” the president said regarding Greenland. “You can say no, and we will remember,” he added. Message sent and received.
LIZ PEEK: TRUMP IS PUTTING AMERICA FIRST BY BACKING IRAN INTO A CORNER
The president’s speech was a reminder to the assembled globalists of the surging American economic growth, and of the enormous American economy behind it. But anyone who listened to the president’s press conference on Wednesday had heard most of the recap already.
It’s good to hammer those points home in every forum the president visits — from Switzerland to Iowa (where he’s off to next) because American voters’ perceptions of the economy will drive the midterms.
A reminder: the second set of midterm elections in the last four second terms of Republican presidencies — Ike’s in 1958, Nixon/Ford’s in 1974, Reagan’s in 1986 and George W. Bush’s in 2006 were tough going for the GOP, seeing, for example, the net loss of 49, 48, 5 and 30 House seats respectively. The tidal charts of American politics typically forecast bad news for the “in” party in that dreaded sixth year of a presidency.
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So it is a very smart move to repeat, and repeat, and repeat the good news on the economy.
Only when President Trump sat down for questions did anything new cross our screens.
“Iran was the bully of the Middle East. They aren’t the bully anymore,” President Trump told his questioner in a brief 15-minute sit-down after his speech. The very polite Eurocrat didn’t think follow up to ask about the 18,000 Iranians murdered by their regime last week or the tens of thousands imprisoned in that theocracy run by fanatics, a regime waiting for the world to lose interest before doling out its punishments to the captives.
We have no idea what President Trump will order the American military to do with regards to Iran. Not to punish them severely for the barbarity that has few if any parallels in this century other than 9/11 and 10/7 would be a terrible mistake.
The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the strike group of warships gathered around it was ordered last week to close on Iran and almost certainly will be within striking range of Iran by this weekend if it isn’t already. Other military weaponry has been dispatched to the region. Our allies in Israel and among the Gulf States have had sufficient notice to prepare should Iran be foolish enough to respond to a punishment strike.
But punishment should be forthcoming. To do nothing is to reward the savagery of the ayatollahs. “That which gets rewarded gets repeated” is among the oldest — and truest — of clichés. If Iran can mow down thousands of its own people and the world yawns in response, it will do so again, and again and again.
President Trump has lots of options. Pray he uses at least one of them to send the message: Never do that again.
