An MS NOW reporter was stunned following President Donald Trump's shift away from suggesting he would use military force to seize Greenland and his comments to world leaders on Wednesday.
Ravi Agrawal described a full room at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where people were anticipating hearing Trump's comments on the Arctic island, NATO and the future of the United States' relationship with European nations.
"Gosh, I mean, a lot of people here calling it performance art, or maybe performance imperialism. This was a stunning speech, I've been to many Davoses over the last 15 years, I've never seen one speech that was this anticipated with this many hundreds of people trying to get in because they wanted to see in person Trump repeat the threats he has made on social media and add some balas to it."
During the 90 minutes, the first 30 minutes were scripted, Agrawal said. And that he didn't bring up Greenland until the end.
"Ever the showman, he knew that that is the only reason why people had come in to listen to him in the numbers that they did, and of course, he didn't disappoint," Agrawal said. "The points he made were rambling, he said that NATO has never done anything for the United States, which is absolutely untrue. The only time Article 5 of NATO has been invoked is to defend the United States after 9/11. And Greenland, Denmark, more than any other country, has lost more troops helping Americans more than any other country as a percentage of their population."
People were curious if Trump would repeat his claims on social media in front of the world leaders.
"These are facts that everyone in the audience knew about, but they were there to see whether Trump would repeat all of these lies in person and whether he would add some more weight to his threats," Agrawal said.
"The question now is whether European leaders will add some action to their words. I have to say I am seeing for the first time in a long time, European leaders really resolve in a strong way to do more than just words because they realize how serious this now is," he added.
