Donald Trump has been operating like an authoritarian ruler since retaking the presidency a year ago, openly flouting Congress, the Constitution, the court system, and anything else standing in the way of his agenda. He recently started musing about canceling the midterm elections, and is currently in the midst of an imperialistic push to wrest control of Greenland from America’s NATO ally, Denmark. He hasn’t paid much mind to international law, either.
Trump is in Davos, Switzerland, this week, trying to make a case that Denmark is “our territory.” He offered a bit of insight into how he views his role as president while taking questions from the press following his speech to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday. “We got good reviews on that speech,” Trump said of what he claims was a positive response to his speech earlier in the day. “Usually they say he’s a horrible dictator-type person.”
“But sometimes you need a dictator,” the president added.
Trump claimed during the speech that he would not use force to take control of Greenland — which he referred to as “Iceland” multiple times — but repeatedly stressed that the U.S. should take over the “piece of ice, for world protection.” He continued to threaten that “we will remember” if Denmark doesn’t cede control. When asked by a reporter to clarify what he meant when he said “we will remember” if Denmark doesn’t give Greenland to the U.S., Trump replied, “You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. You’re a smart guy.”
Trump’s speech also featured a series of domestic grievances, with the president railing against Somali immigrants, bashing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, and alleging, falsely, that he won the 2020 presidential election and that people responsible for rigging it against him would soon be prosecuted. He claimed falsely that steel plants are being built “all over” America, and that only “losers” use wind power. “The more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses and the worse that country is doing,” Trump said. “China makes almost all of the windmills and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China. Did you ever think of that?” (China uses more wind power than any other nation, by a significant margin.)
Trump’s address to the world stood in stark contrast to the speech Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered on Tuesday, one in which he warned that the world order is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” referencing how great powers are weaponizing economic policy while criticizing the tariffs Trump said he was leveling against America’s allies over their opposition to his bid to take control of Greenland. Trump backed down from imposing new tariffs on Europe on Wednesday, announcing on Truth Social that he and NATO’s Mark Rutte had a “very productive meeting” which led to “the framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.” When asked by the press whether the deal included the U.S. owning Greenland, something Trump has insisted upon, Trump hesitated before saying it’s “a long-term deal.”
Trump casually tossing out that dictators are sometimes necessary is concerning, to say the least, but of course not out of line with his repeated praise for the world’s authoritarian leaders, his social media posts equating himself to royalty, or his myriad unconstitutional moves as president. Trump famously said during his 2024 campaign that he wanted to be “dictator for one day.” The thing about dictators, though, is that they don’t tend to put time constraints around their power.
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