Okay. Donald Quixote John Trump, President of the United States, spent a good part of his speech at Davos today tilting at windmills. Some of the windmills were actual windmills, as he made it clear that (1) all they do is kill birds and ruin the landscape, (2) no more will be allowed in the United States, (3) Europe’s energy production is being crippled by windmills and the New Green Scam, and (4) China makes all the world’s windmills but does not have any wind farms itself, other than some Potemkin wind farms that look like wind farms, but that do not farm the wind.

He claimed that American energy production would increase because of coal and Venezuelan oil, and maybe new nuclear plants. But he added another source of electric energy – excess electricity produced by data centers. That’s the first time I have heard that, rather than hearing that data centers are sucking up our energy and that will make electric and other energy more difficult to produce and more expensive for the consumer.

There was little that he said that he hadn’t said before – a lot of questionable (at best) statistics that he has used as recently as yesterday in the speech where he was praising himself for such a wonderful first year. But there were some things he said (or that I think I heard him say) that were interesting.

First, he said that there were no plans to use force to capture Greenland. Yesterday, when he was asked how far he would go to take Greenland for the United States, he said, basically and quite ominously, “wait and see”. So today, there was a bit of backtracking, but of course he could change his mind tomorrow.

Secondly, he said that the United States won World War II. Well, there is some truth to that, although the Russians would have a different opinion, at least as to the war in Europe. And he says that, in World War II, Greenland was not only protected and secured by the United States, but that at the end of the war, Greenland belonged to the United States, but that we “gave it back” to Denmark. Let me restate that: he said that after the war, we “stupidly gave it back” to Denmark.

This, I guess, is the newest fiction being used by Trump to legitimize his imperialistic tendencies. Remember that he said that the oil that we have seized from tankers leaving Venezuela, and the oil that remains under the ground in Venezuela, is actually American oil, and that Venezuela (presumably during its nationalization process) stole it from us, so we are only taking back what is ours.

Both of these claims (Venezuela’s oil belongs to us, and we stupidly gave Greenland back to Denmark) are fictions, of course, but his believers, members of what I have begun to call the Gullible Old Party (GOP) will treat them as gospel.

Besides insulting half of the room (the room being filled with people whom “he loves”, but can not help but insult), and talking about all of the great things happening in America (no crime in Washington, DC, and soon no crime in New Orleans, as well as what great things are now happening in Minneapolis), there were a few items he left out of the talk (at least I think he did).

For one thing, he did not mention his new Board of Peace, which originally was meant to stabilize Gaza (or turn it into a Mediterranean resort, but now seems to be an invite-only replacement for the United Nations. That surprised me.

In fact, he did not mention Gaza, or Gaza’s future in the speech, and that surprised me as well. He also did not mention drugs.

As I listened to Trump, I realized something else that is missing from all of his speeches. As we all know, the basic premise of everything he does, is concentrated on his own magnificent abilities, which he touts as being beyond the abilities of anyone else. You can not name one former president, for example, whom Trump praises. Each of them was stupid in the extreme.

Doesn’t this create a major problem? If every president prior to Trump was a dumb bell, what is to say that presidents who come after Trump won’t equally all be dumb bells? And if all future presidents are dumb bells, how would all the miracles that Trump is bringing to the world today be maintained after he is no longer president? You would think that this would be important to him, and that he would be talking about how to assure continuity, but this does not seem to be anywhere in his mind. Perhaps this is not surprising, and that Trump’s goal is not changing the world for a long period, but creating a legacy that will place Trump as the uniquely perfect president, who strengthened the United States during his terms of office in ways that no preceding and no succeeding president could hope to do.

It will of course be interesting to see what happens in Davos, and outside of Davos. What will the reactions of the Danes and other Europeans be to Trump’s demands? And if the Danes won’t agree to give up sovereignty over Greenland, and Trump will not use military means to take (or apparently in his mind, to take back) Greenland, what can we expect to happen? We see today that the European Union (I think that is the correct body) has suspended its trade agreement with the United States, and that a Danish pension fund has disposed of its US Treasuries. We see that Trump has set tariffs against European countries to rise on Feb 1, and again this summer, and that Europe can retaliate against American products either with comparative tariffs, or with what is being referred to as a trade bazooka, or something like that, which, as I understand it, is simply a prohibition on the export of European products to the United States.

D.Q.J. Trump will have a number of meetings in Davos yet today with European leaders, including President Zelensky, and we will see what comes of them. He talked in his speech about the number of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers being killed month by month, and how well he gets along with President Putin; he did not say that he gets along with Zelensky.

He did praise his relationship with some others. He said he “likes” French President Macron; he did not say that about Canadian Prime Minister Carney, who he thinks is ungrateful. He likes and respects President Xi of China (“everybody likes him”, I think he said). He really dislikes Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who “won’t be there very long”, or something like that, but he likes Gavin Newsom, with whom “he has always gotten along”. He loves the Danish people and the Danish leaders, but what kind of a country is it that allowed Germany to take over its land six hours after the start of an invasion, and how can they be expected to do anything?

The reaction to Trump’s speech at Davos was muted at best. It might be the first time that I ever heard a president give a speech at a world wide forum like that where there was not one instance of applause or laughter until the end, and where the ending applause was what you would describe only as “polite”. I can’t imagine anyone being pleased with the speech, and we will see what courage the various world leaders have in their public reactions to it.