When President Donald Trump agreed to address the World Economic Forum in Davos, he saved that meeting from impending irrelevance — at least for a year. When the President of the United States attends a forum, the world’s collective attention will be focused on it.
The American public usually stares at this collection of big wigs who would like to become the world – coming from the richest in the world, who are mostly not from our republic, but talk about it and how it and the world should work – and don’t like that look at all.
But President Trump came with some of his “A-team” on international economic and security issues, and made Davos great again. People agreed.
Two comments stood out to me. Regarding the president’s desire to acquire Greenland, he made one thing very clear: “I will not use force.” That simple statement galvanized markets around the world, which had imagined some kind of intra-NATO kinetic conflict and panicked on Tuesday. That’s not going to happen, even though the president has made it very clear that he will use all the levers at his disposal. “You can say yes, and we will be very grateful,” the president said of Greenland. “You can say no, and we will remember,” he added. Message sent and received.
LIZ PEEK: TRUMP PUT AMERICA FIRST BY SUPPORTING IRAN IN A CORNER
The president’s speech reminded the assembled globalists of the rising American economic growth, and the enormous American economy behind it. But anyone listening to the president’s news conference on Wednesday had already heard most of the summary.
It’s good to make these points in every forum the president visits – from Switzerland to Iowa (where he’s going), because American voters’ perceptions of the economy will determine the midterm elections.
As a reminder, the second set of midterm elections in the last four second-term Republican presidencies—Ike’s in 1958, Nixon/Ford’s in 1974, Reagan’s in 1986, and George W. Bush’s in 2006—were tough for the Republican Party, given the net loss of 49, 48, 5, and 30 seats in the House of Representatives, respectively. The tide charts of American politics generally portend bad news for the “in” party in that dreaded sixth year of the presidency.
TRUMP LEADERSHIP CREATES ‘RARE OPPORTUNITY’ FOR CHANGE IN IRAN, SAYS FORMER Iranian POLITICAL PRISONER
So it’s a very smart move to repeat, and repeat, and repeat the good news about the economy.
It wasn’t until President Trump sat down for questions that something new appeared on our screens.
“Iran was the bully of the Middle East. They’re not the bully anymore,” President Trump told his questioner in a brief 15-minute sit-down after his speech. The very polite Eurocrat did not think to ask a follow-up question about the 18,000 Iranians murdered by their regime last week or the tens of thousands imprisoned in that theocracy run by fanatics, a regime that waits for the world to lose interest before meting out its punishments to the prisoners.
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We have no idea what President Trump will order the US military to do regarding Iran. It would be a terrible mistake not to punish them severely for barbarism that has few if any parallels in this century, with the exception of 9/11 and 10/7.
The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the strike group of warships massed around it were ordered to close in on Iran last week and will almost certainly be within range of Iran this weekend, if not already. Other military weapons have been sent to the region. Our allies in Israel and among the Gulf states have had plenty of time to prepare should Iran be foolish enough to respond to a punitive strike.
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But there must be a punishment. Doing nothing means rewarding the ayatollahs’ cruelty. “What is rewarded is repeated” is one of the oldest – and truest – clichés. If Iran can mow down thousands of its own people and the world gawks in response, it will do it again, and again, and again.
President Trump has many options. Pray that he uses at least one to get the message across: never do that again.
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