Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was an embarrassing mess. The American president peddled a series of absurd falsehoods, he needlessly targeted U.S. allies with baseless whining, and he reminded much of the Western world over the course of an hour and a half why the Trump-led United States has seen its international standing collapse.
But one part of the Republican’s weird, meandering remarks generated attention for an unexpected reason.
Roughly halfway through the speech, Trump claimed that he was popular with NATO leaders, “until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland.” About a minute later, again referring to ostensible U.S. allies, the American president added, “They’re not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. I mean, our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.”
In context, Trump clearly misspoke, referring to Iceland when he meant Greenland. The timing of the mistake was far from ideal — just last week, his spectacularly unqualified nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Iceland, Billy Long, “joked” about Iceland becoming the 52nd state — but accidents happen.
It would have been easy for the White House simply to acknowledge that the president had misspoken. Since everyone misspeaks from time to time, this likely would have generated very little attention.
But that’s not what happened. The New York Times reported:
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, denied that Mr. Trump had misspoken, responding in a social media post to a reporter who wrote that he had appeared to mix the countries up multiple times.
‘No he didn’t,’ she wrote to the reporter. ‘His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.’
In other words, Leavitt would have us believe that when Trump said “Iceland” four times, he was really commenting on “ice land.” As in a land of ice.
In context, that is obviously preposterous. The Orwellian pushback, however, was oddly familiar.
Ahead of the New Hampshire presidential primary during the 2024 election cycle, Trump spoke at a campaign rally and accidentally referred to former Ambassador Nikki Haley, his principal intraparty rival at the time, when he meant to talk about House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
There was no great mystery behind the slip-up. Haley was obviously on his mind days ahead of a closely watched primary, so he mentioned her name in error.
Soon after, then-House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, desperate to impress Trump, told a national television audience that this wasn’t “a mix-up,” despite what everyone heard him say.
Something similar happened in 2019. As Hurricane Dorian approached the United States, Trump published a tweet that included Alabama among the states “most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated.” Soon after, the National Weather Service told the public the opposite: The region was in danger, but Alabama wasn’t among the states likely to be affected.
When news outlets noted the president’s error, Trump took great offense, insisting he was right, despite the obvious fact that he was mistaken. It set in motion a series of increasingly ridiculous events, culminating in Trump displaying a map to which he literally took a pen, drawing a bump onto the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast so he could make the scientific prediction conform retroactively to his mistake. (The mess became known as “Sharpiegate.”)
Leavitt’s line on the president’s “Iceland” reference is a page from the same book. Since Trump’s loyalists insist he is incapable of being wrong, even minor, inconsequential slip-ups have to be rejected and denied.
The tactics make the White House and its allies look worse. By all appearances, they don’t care.
