Trump the Davos diva only made this key weakness more obvious — and more costly

Donald Trump didn’t just fly to Davos, after a false start thanks to problems with Air Force One, to attend the World Economic Forum. He fled there to be with his brethren.

Some say he fled mounting scrutiny of the Epstein files. More likely, he fled the affordability crisis crushing working Americans, and the reality that his central campaign promise, to lower the cost of living, has collapsed under the weight of his obsessions with revenge and self-enrichment, and his insatiable need to dominate the global spotlight.

Davos gave Trump what he craves: billionaires, deference, a room full of powerful people forced to listen to his garbage and kowtow. A far cry from the poor, obtuse, gauche MAGA crowd he secretly loathes like everyone else.

In the days before Davos, Trump kicked up a geopolitical kerfuffle, threatening to acquire Greenland, floating military action against Venezuela, aiming reckless rhetoric at allies. None of it was accidental, none of it served American interests. It served Trump.

Trump is obsessed with attention, and Davos, an annual gathering of the world’s wealthiest elites, was the perfect stage. He didn’t want to attend as a participant; he wanted to be the main character. He wanted to dominate the news cycle, command the room, and surround himself with flunkies eager to flatter, validating his delusions of dominance.

And it worked. Everyone scampered around him, wanting to know about Greenland, and wouldn’t you know it, as evening fell, he miraculously announced that one of his “framework” agreements had been reached with NATO. It happened so quickly because Trump got the attention he wanted.

It was from his patented playbook of pandemonium: Trump creates a problem, and lo and behold, Trump fixes the problem, and Trump is the hero.

But Trump has also created an affordability problem, and he has no idea how to fix it. While he hobnobbed in Davos, working Americans were being crushed at home.

Prices are rising. Groceries cost more. Health insurance premiums are surging. And now even executives aligned with Trump’s economic worldview are admitting the obvious. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently acknowledged that Trump’s sweeping tariffs are beginning to show up in consumer prices, as sellers pass costs on to shoppers.

Economists warned this would happen, the moment Trump launched his tariff tantrum last year. Consumers picking up the tab was never a question of if, but when.

That “when” is arriving now. The only question is whether it will wake people up.

Democrats are rallying around two simple words: affordability and accountability. As the midterm campaigns ramp up, affordability will only grow more urgent. By summer, after the primaries, as messaging crystallizes, the cost-of-living crisis will hit an inflection point. Prices will continue rising, largely unchecked, and voters will start looking for answers.

Trump has none. And Republicans are having hissy fits, panicking that he’s coming up empty-handed on the issue that put him back in power.

Accountability stretches across the wreckage of Trump’s second term: Justice Department retribution, Homeland Security overreach and ICE raids, legally dubious experiments like the Department of Government Efficiency, reckless military action, and an administration increasingly untethered from the Constitution.

But Trump’s most glaring failure is personal. He promised to lower costs for working families, and he has abandoned even the pretense of trying.

Instead, he is enriching himself at breakneck speed.

He surrounds himself with gold. He covets prizes, accepts luxury gifts, and monetizes everything: Bitcoin, branding, real estate, and influence. Billionaires flocked to his inauguration. Tech CEOs and luxury executives parade through the Oval Office, bearing tribute. Trump isn’t governing. He’s cashing in like he always planned to do, because he couldn’t do it in the business world.

When Trump failed as a businessman, he didn’t regroup or reform. He declared bankruptcy. Six times. The lazy way out. That instinct hasn’t changed. Faced with an affordability crisis he created and cannot solve and a working-class base he can no longer plausibly serve, he is once again walking away. He’s declaring political bankruptcy on the very people who put him in office.

And he knows it.

Trump may be unread and uninformed, but he isn’t stupid. He understands that his MAGA base, especially its lower-income core, will be hit hardest by rising prices and economic instability. He also knows he doesn’t need them the way he once did. If he wants to retain power, he’ll pursue it through intimidation, exploiting legal loopholes, or he’ll do it illegally. He won’t go to the trouble of stumping red states.

Trump has turned the People’s House into a personal palace, complete with ballrooms and gilded excess. The choice before him is simple: invest in affordability or indulge in opulence. For Trump, there is no choice.

At Davos, surrounded by the world’s richest men, Trump tried to sell a fairy-tale economy built on lies and bravado. “Nobody thought it could be done.” “Numbers nobody’s seen in years.” But those numbers aren’t real, and working Americans feel it every time they pay a bill.

Some of Trump’s base will never see this. They live in an echo chamber where imperial bullying sounds like strength and every hardship is blamed on Democrats or invented statistics. Even an economic calamity may not shake their loyalty.

But independents are paying attention. Casual voters will notice. People who don’t follow Davos or cable news will still recognize betrayal when their bills rise and Trump is nowhere to be found, except on a global stage, basking in billionaire adoration.

Trump is inching away from MAGA. He knows he can. He knows many will never leave him. And he knows the elite world he always wanted has finally opened its doors.

That’s what makes him so dangerous and so offensive. He doesn’t just exploit his supporters. He holds them in contempt.

Empathy for MAGA was always a lie. Davos just made it more obvious.

• John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”