DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — For the unacquainted, Davos is the home of the World Economic Forum, and hosts a yearly confab of the global elite. The stars are the chiefs of globalist institutions like the IMF; the UN; progressive prime ministers; and all the big banks.
This year was different. The headliner was a real-estate developer from Queens.
Who also happens to be president of the United States.
He wasn’t here in person, but The Donald dominated every conversation — and not always in a bad way, even given his America First agenda, and his penchant not to care what the IMF, the UN or the people at the WEF think.
In some ways, the globalist crowd is scared to death of The Donald, and for good reasons. Joe Biden was sleepy but predictably globalist. They recall Trump’s first unconventional term as president. In the early days of Trump II, he already issued an executive order halting foreign aid for the next 90 days; he is ending all the globalists shibboleths of environmental social governance — the corporate embrace of zero carbon future and wokeism.
He wants to drill baby drill — and what lefty globalist wants that?
In other ways, however, they’re also relieved. Unlike Biden, an actual, sentient human being is now the leader of the free world. They owe their protection to a man who doesn’t sleep all day; no one here really wants a future of speaking Chinese or Russian.
Trump was beamed in Thursday to address the crowd and he gave a very Trumpy speech reminding big banks like JPMorgan there will be penalties for going woke — in his words, “debanking conservatives.” He said diversity equity and inclusion mandates — a form of racial and gender equalization that used to be big with the Davos crowd — is the way of the past.
The reaction was pretty positive, or at least not hostile. Ditto for Trump’s social media tweet warning Vladimir Putin he better get to the table and negotiate a real peace in its years-long conflict with Ukraine.
The globalists used to believe Trump had a man crush on the Russian strongman, and thought he was about to sell out Ukraine to appease old Vlad.
That’s not the tenor of conversations as the forum draws to a close. What they’re learning is that Trump is friends with someone until he’s not. And that goes for Vladimir Putin.
Trump sees WWIII as not being in US interests (for obvious reasons) and if Putin doesn’t play ball Trump will make whatever sanctions imposed by Sleepy Joe Biden look small, possibly using frozen Russian assets in the West to fund Ukraine’s military.
The globalists are always worried about something. But I also saw a bit of hope, because a new sheriff is in town and he’s not falling asleep at the wheel.