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“We never asked for anything, and we never got anything. We probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force, where we would be frankly unstoppable. But I won’t do that, okay?” he said, before adding: “I don’t have to” and “I don’t want to use force.”
Before leaving Davos, he announced there is a “framework of a future deal with respect to Greenland.” Still, European leaders were left uneasy, particularly in light of previous comments where Trump warned that the world would “find out” how far he was willing to go to make the territory part of the United States.
‘Appalling’
The rift intensified further when Trump criticized NATO’s role in the war in Afghanistan.
Speaking with Fox Business in Davos, he claimed NATO allies stayed out of harm’s way. “We’ve never needed [NATO] – we have never really asked anything of them,” he said in the side interview with the outlet. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan or this or that, and they did: they stayed a little back, little off the front lines.”
According to CNN, the facts contradict Trump’s statement. Of the roughly 3,500 NATO coalition troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan, 2,456 were Americans, and 457 were British. Other smaller countries made significant sacrifices – Denmark, for example, lost more than 40 troops despite having a population of just over 5 million at the start of the war.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer called Trump’s comments “insulting and frankly appalling”
“I’m not surprised they’ve caused such hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured,” Starmer said. “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologize.”
Though Trump later praised British troops as “among the greatest of all warriors,” he did not apologize for his remarks.
‘Strike any part of Europe’
Amid these widening cracks in transatlantic relations, Russian state media has seized the moment with horrifying threats, the Express reports.
On Russian state television, Kremlin-aligned broadcaster and propagandist Vladimir Solovyov issued a chilling message: “Basically, we can choose to strike any part of Europe. Americans won’t retaliate,” he warned.
Solovyov’s statement reflects a growing narrative on Russian media channels that the U.S., under Trump, will no longer support NATO – and Europe – as it once did.
He claimed that a future alliance between the U.S. and Russia could leave European nations “on their own.”
