Trump whisperers, bullying and leaked texts: World leaders are still struggling to deal with the Rule of Don

We’re going to Davos – it’s going to be an interesting trip,” Donald Trump told reporters, just before boarding a delayed Air Force One flight to the annual World Economic Forum.

Hours later, the US president was tearing into his European and Nato allies in a characteristically combative speech to world leaders and CEOs in Switzerland.

He threatened France with tariffs over drug prices, said Denmark had fallen to Nazi Germany within six hours, and that without the US, everyone in the room would “all be speaking German... and a little Japanese perhaps”.

Trump branded Canada’s leadership “ungrateful”, Europe “unrecognisable” and mixed up Iceland and Greenland repeatedly while still vowing to take the latter for “security reasons”.

And then came an entirely unveiled threat to those opposing his ambitions for the Danish territory: “You can say yes and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no and we will remember.”

Since Trump first came to power a decade ago, presidents and prime ministers alike have been left struggling to know how best to navigate his behaviour and Davos was no different.

European leaders in particular have been accused of trying too hard to please him, failing to push back and taking one tone in public and another behind closed doors.

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Trump’s whirlwind visit to the global gathering of political and business leaders saw the president cut deals and offer vital concessions in one breath and then publicly humiliate his supposed allies with the next.

But after a year of aggressive foreign policy that has seen the US force regime change in Venezuela and use widespread tariffs to start destructive trade wars, there is a sense that patience among some nations is finally wearing thin.

Some world leaders, like British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer – notably absent from the event – have attempted to forge a reputation as a “Trump whisperer” in a bid to keep him on side.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former Nato secretary general and president of Denmark, said the Greenland crisis proves any bid to pander to Trump was pointless.

“The time for flattering is over,” he told reporters in Davos. “It doesn’t work. The fact is Trump only respects force and strength. And unity. That’s exactly what Europe should demonstrate right now.”

Critics like Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and French president Emmanuel Macron took shots at Trump’s new world order in their keynote speeches, though neither dared name him directly.

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“We prefer respect to bullies, we prefer science to conspiracies, and we prefer the rule of law to brutality,” Macron said, while sporting headline-grabbing Aviator sunglasses.

But rhetoric in public does not always match reality in private, something Trump has openly acknowledged.

In a press conference before his trip, the president said he gets on with Macron and Starmer in person, but that “they get a little bit rough when I’m not around”.

“When I’m around they treat me very nicely,” he noted, before saying that both leaders needed to “straighten out their countries” and that Macron would not be around for long anyway, with his term set to end next year.

Before his plane touched down in Switzerland, Trump went further and shared personal text messages he had received by the French president, on his Truth Social platform.

“My friend,” one message from Macron began. “We are totally in line on Syria. We can do great things on Iran. I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland. Let us try to build great things:

“1) i can set up a G7 meeting after Davos in Paris onThursday afternoon. I can invite the ukrainians, the danish, the syrians and the russians in the margins. 2) let us have a dinner together in Paris together on Thursday before you go back to the US. Emmanuel.”

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Trump also shared a message from Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who often lavishes praises on the president and infamously referred to him once as “Daddy”.

His text read: “Mr. President, dear Donald – what you accomplished in Syria today is incredible. I will use my media engagements in Davos to highlight your work there, in Gaza, and in Ukraine. I am committed to finding a way forward on Greenland. Can’t wait to see you. Yours, Mark.”

At first Rutte’s flattery seemed to be successful, on the thorny subject of Greenland at least. Hours after his speech, Trump reversed course and abandoned plans to impose tariffs on a group of US allies that had objected to his push to acquire the territory, after what the president described as a “very productive” meeting with the Nato secretary general.

Rutte batted off a question at the forum on whether he was the true “Trump whisperer”, uniquely able to steer the president, arguing that there was no need for a special strategy when Trump was already “doing the right stuff” around Nato and the Arctic.

But it did not take long for tensions to return to the surface. During his speech, Trump had questioned whether Nato would come to America’s rescue if needed.

Sat before the world’s cameras on Wednesday night, Rutte chose his moment to tell Trump that Europe absolutely would – and had done before in Afghanistan.

“For every two Americans who paid the ultimate price, there was one soldier from another Nato country who did not come back to his family – from the Netherlands, from Denmark, and particularly from other countries,” he said, as Trump sat quietly, nodding.

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Trump poured fuel on the fire in a subsequent interview with Fox News on Thursday, questioning the dedication of European troops in the war and sparking widespread backlash.

“I've always said, will they be there if we ever needed them? That’s really the ultimate test, and I’m not sure of that,” he said. “We’ve never needed them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan... and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines.”

For California governor and potential presidential candidate Gavin Newsom, who also attended Davos this week, the only response to what he called the “Rule of Don” was fighting back.

Upon his arrival in Switzerland, Newsom found himself pleading with European leaders to stand up for themselves and take a stronger stance against Trump.

“People are rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of kneepads for all the world leaders,” the Democrat told reporters. “It’s just pathetic.

“The Europeans should decide for themselves what to do, but one thing they can’t do is what they’ve been doing. They've been played. This guy [Trump] is playing folks for fools.”

Georg Riekeles, associate director of the European Policy Centre, agreed that Europe has “for too long... clung to a comforting belief” that it should avoid fighting back because it depends upon Washington for security.

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“This argument is wrong,” he wrote in The Guardian. “Moreover, it is strategically corrosive. In a world of open coercion, appeasement and restraint do not buy stability. They invite further pressure.

“Trade conflicts, like coercive bargaining and military deterrence, are shaped in large part by escalation dominance – the ability to convince the other side that you are more willing and more capable of sustaining pressure.

“That dominance does not rest on size and leverage alone, but on unity and determination. On both counts, Europe has recently failed itself.”

The message that European leaders were coming up short was hammered home by a clearly frustrated Volodymyr Zelensky, in a stinging speech on Thursday.

“Instead of taking the lead in defending freedom worldwide – especially when America’s focus shifts elsewhere – Europe looks lost trying to convince the US president to change,” the Ukrainian president said, shortly after meeting Trump.

“But he will not change. President Trump loves who he is. And he says he loves Europe, but he will not listen to this kind of Europe.”