The Charlie Kirk Show - The Donald Goes to Davos + Trump 2.0 at One Year

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

All eyes were on Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, where President Trump delivered his remarks on Greenland, mass migration, and more to the captive audience of elites at the World Economic Forum. The team reacts to Trump's negotiation style and the strategic merits of his Greenland bid. Sean Davis reacts to the sweeping Democrat plans to transform Virginia, and assesses the accomplishments of the second Trump Admin at the one-year mark. Watch every episode ad-free on members.charliekirk.com! Get new merch at charliekirkstore.com!Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers. All right, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show. It is January 21st, 2026. We are here in the studio in Phoenix. Welcome, Blake. One year.

One year, one year anniversary. We're actually going to have Sean Davis, co-founder and CEO of the Federalist on in the second hour to look back at one year of President Trump's second term in office, 47. These things race by, don't they? Oh, man. And everything that happened with Charlie just felt like part of it fell into a bit of a black hole. for us in here, but there's a lot to talk about a year in review.

With Sean, we're actually going to have him review what's going on in Virginia. And his take is that it's worse than anybody has any idea about it. It portends ill. Oh, Virginia's, Virginia's doom. That's what I'm telling all of my friends who are there. Oh, it's terrible. It's what I warned about, like, at least with a lot of other blue states, they can break it hard enough that you can leave. But in Virginia, they can just rely.

I stuck up all of the money through the federal government. They're worse than Somali pirates there in Northern Virginia. Oh, far worse. I mean, by magnitudes. But the big news of the morning, of course, is President Trump gave his big speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and made huge news. So let's just start with the clip, and then we're going to unpack this. So President Trump made it very clear. There's been this back and forth.

We want Greenland. We'll buy it. Actually, we're going to use force. if you don't play a ball. A rough ruling. And Blake, it was squirming the whole time, very uncomfortable with this. Then at Davos, he made it clear. We will not use force, but we still really want it.

327. 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? Now everyone's saying, oh, good. That's probably the biggest statement I made,

because people thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland. All we're asking for is a place called Greenland. All we're asking for, just $560,000 square miles.

No, I, listen, there is. There's a guy named Josh Wolfe on X. He's a partner at Lux Capital, founding chair, Cy Prep. Anyways, smart guy, got a lot of followers. This article is getting a lot of traction. And what he's doing is he's breaking down a classic Trump negotiation tactic. That's why it's getting a lot of traction. So I want to give attribution where it's due to this gentleman.

Again, his name is Josh Wolfe. and he says, you know, he's kind of observing that the press thinks it's a spectacle. Europeans say it's a breaking with international norms and a rule-based order. He calls that all a mirage, by the way, which I tend to agree. There is a part of this where Trump is actually doing the math correctly that NATO doesn't work without America. That doesn't mean we want to mistreat our allies. Trump is a saber-rattler. He's a negotiator.

And I think he sees through a bunch of the rule-based, order, which is really they get their way America pays for it. And I think people are sick of it. And so what he says is this, quote, what is actually underway, it's not all the noise, listen to this, is supply chain annexation dressed in the costume of territorial ambition. The target is not an island. It is two geological formations in southern Greenland. And I'm going to pronounce these terribly, but Kavegefeld and Tandbreze that contain the heavy rare earth elements without which no advanced weapon system can be built dysprosium terribium names that mean nothing to the public but everything to the pentagon

these elements are irreplaceable in the actuators of f-35 fighters the guidance fins of precision munitions the sonar arrays of virginia class submarines and the permanent magnets of every electric vehicle motor china controls over 90 percent of global processing the united states controls almost none the quote unquote purchase of greenland is not a land deal it's attempt to break a chokehold that's one of the very key elements there's also the fact that trump is now signaling to canada that this is about building the golden dome and he's warning carney up in canada the great white north neighbor saying you know why don't you watch your mouth when you're when you're talking about these things and flirting with the ccp mr carney 312. Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way. They should be grateful also, but then not. I watch your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. They should be grateful to us.

Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements. A direct shot across the bow to... He's mad. He's very mad. But it does. It shows why this is a double-sided thing, I believe, because he's being very forceful. He's being very assertive about America. And I know that guy you were just reading in others. Josh Wolf. Yeah, Josh Wolf.

They're very skeptical of that international order. They say it's fake and all of that. But a lot of it was, if it is fakeness that did benefit the United States in a lot of ways, I think. It was the presumption that nations would look to the United States, that they would orbit around us. And we had to subsidize them a lot. A lot. But I think President Trump had a lot of success in basically saying, you guys are free riding too much. You need to pony up more.

In fact, Denmark is a good example of that. Denmark, I was checking this. In 2015, Denmark was paying, I think, 1% of their GDP towards defense. They were totally not spending money to defend things. And during President Trump's first term, he says to Europe, this is NATO's an alliance. It's not just us. You guys have to point out. And they tripled the amount they were spending on defense.

we have had some success getting these guys to spend more. I think there's two points. I think Josh Wolf makes some good points with the rare earth, the heavy rare earth minerals that China largely controls around the world. And that Greenland has apparently a lot of. There's that point. There's also the point that Trump wants to build a golden dome, which will protect Canada as well.

And if you look at a map that is, you know, I think we, yeah, this map, 331, if you see this map, if the U.S. acquires Greenland, if you, you know, because oftentimes we see those maps that are laid out sort of long ways as opposed to the globe where it's properly positioned. You see how far north of the lower 48 and how well positioned it is to defend against attacks that might come over the Arctic from Russia, from China, where there are ICBM stations that could reach the U.S. that could reach Canada. That position is very strategic in building a global dome. And it was interesting in the in the speech. President Trump made this point. He said it's not just you know, you got to understand it's a psychological difference. Nobody wants to invest hundreds of

billions of dollars in something that they're leasing that could go back to an original owner. You know, so that part actually makes a lot of sense. But if the U.S. controls those two fronts, Alaska and Greenland, the ability to defend the lower 48 becomes extraordinarily robust, especially from ICBM attacks coming over the Arctic. So listen, there's a lot of stuff that makes sense here. And it was interesting to me because you have been raising the alarm, Blake, I think in a lot of ways. You're worried that we're alienating our most tried and true partners in Europe, which you acknowledge have a lot of problems.

I get that. I'm not saying you're giving them a free ride here. But it was interesting that your take was that his you actually appreciated the tone this morning. Explain why you thought it was more measured. So as I said, I think the biggest risk here, as I've explained, is that they look at what the President Trump's doing. It's not just, oh, he's being assertive like he is before. It's the sense, is he being unreliable? Because, for example, with NATO, you can say NATO, you need to spend more on your defense.

but if you're straight up saying, we are going to take territory from you abruptly, make this new demand, and if not, any number of things can happen, at that point, you're basically saying this isn't a military alliance anymore. This is a thing. We can extort you. We can extort territory from you. So I like him saying, okay, we're not going to attack you. We're going to operate through the normal means. We don't want, there's always that risk that President Trump will kind of, you drive your partners away so much they say,

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We have a very interesting video from... Yes. Well, are you going to play the actor one? No, no, well, if we feel like it, because it's funny, but we should probably shouldn't spend a whole minute on a fake video. So we have Mark Root or Ruta, or however he says it. Ruta. and he is a senior official with NATO.

Yep. And he's at Davos. And he's kind of, I sympathize with him because you know he's clearly must be having a hard time. He's a NATO realist. He's a NATO realist. Yeah. But he did say something, which a lot of people are not happy about. And he basically said, Donald Trump is right that Greenland is strategically important.

And I think he's got to make the case. If you're not going to give it to him, you have to really up the defenses for it in a way that makes the security argument less credit. Let's play clip 332. We need to defend the Arctic. We know that the sea lanes are opening up. We know that China and Russia are increasingly active in the Arctic. There are eight countries bordering on the Arctic. Seven are a member of NATO.

That's Finland and Sweden and Norway and Denmark, Iceland, Canada and the US. And there's only one country bordering on the Arctic outside NATO and there's Russia. And I would argue there is a ninth country which is China, which is increasingly active in the Arctic. So President Trump and other leaders are right. We have to do more there. We have to protect the Arctic against Russian and Chinese influence. I've had this thought.

I feel like it's so frustrating. The Europeans, they have to act a certain way because they just don't like Trump a lot. And so for example, this drama we had where they sent their troops up. Did you follow this? Yes, of course. It was so silly. The Germans. It was like they sent like five people.

The best one was Germany, which sent 13 soldiers, but they didn't want to aggravate us by getting it used, making it too military. So what they did is they took a big military plane and they landed it in Denmark and then they put the troops onto a commercial flight and they flew them to Denmark on the commercial plane and they stayed there for two days. They canceled a planned site scene trip because it was too cold and then they got on a commercial flight and they flew home. And they did all this as an obvious gesture, oh, we're standing with Denmark against America. I feel like they would create it. President Trump loves wins if they really, really don't want to give away Denmark, or Greenland, they should have just said,

President Trump is right, here, we're calling a meeting, here's the $5 billion, 10 billion, some big amount of money and like deployment of troops are ready to do in the Arctic and we're going to pay for it. We'll pay for America to expand their bases in the Arctic. We'll pay for this Golden Dome base he wants to build. There you go. And then President Trump, he loves to tell it wins. He comes back.

He's like, I made this great deal. We're expanding our bases in the Arctic. and they're paying for all this. We've seen how he does. This President Trump loves making deals on things. And it's so frustrating that they're not reacting that way. And instead we get both sides digging in their heels and we might get a renewed trade war out of this, potentially.

Yeah, I think today was a step back from that. But, you know, what I would probably would make sense on your line of reasoning is you do it in sort of like a Guantanamo Bay, Cuba scenario where you, you know, if this is what Charlie would say, at least I'm suspecting. because Charlie went to Greenland. This is going in the back of my head. Charlie experienced firsthand all the love that the folks of Nuke had for President Trump. I think Greenlanders want their independence. They want to be able to vote on a referendum. But the point is you could give or sell portions of Greenland to the United States,

almost in a Guantanamo Bay fashion, where we actually do own the land. It can't be taken back. And, you know, Denmark could retain ownership of the rest. Trump would be happy with that because we do want to mine it. We do want to, you know, take these rare earth minerals out of it. But in defense of a strong U.S. imperial economic military force, I just have to say I love it because Trump is calling BS on a lot of this stuff where, you know, Europe is weak. They haven't grown. You know, you've got Germany that's deindustrialized itself over the last few years. Energy prices are soaring. They produce less energy than they did.

I think energy prices up like 75% in Germany and they produced 20% less than they did in 2017. Huge, huge strategic mistake. Meanwhile, President Trump's bringing in $17,18 trillion of direct investment, foreign direct investment, businesses investing in the country. We've got nuclear plants, the brand new ones that are a lot safer, a lot more efficient, smaller, building those all over the country, building new plants, building new factories, GDPs could very well be over 5%. We have a lot going for us, and we're investing a lot in our military. All right, listen, I'd love to cut the debt. I'd love to decrease spending. Those are, let's put those to the side. Those are problems. But there's a lot going for America

that is not going for Europe, and Europe knows it. America is strong, it's aggressive, it's robust, it's muscular, especially under President Trump. Europe is in malaise. Europe is stagnant growth. Europe has a migration problem that is not going away anytime soon. They lack political will. They're fighting a rise of right-wing populism and nationalism in their own countries, and they're distracted. And they have a fertility problem. So you've got all of these things. And candidly, Europe knows that they can't fight America on this. They can't even out-negotiate America on this. Trump is right to call their bluff and say, you would be nothing without us. As a matter of fact, I think we have a clip that says just that, that NATO would be nothing. And we asked for nothing.

he kind of mentioned that before. But this is the truth of the situation. I love that President Trump is calling it. Here's another clip that I think is really important here, actually. It sort of plays into it, 329. In recent decades, it became conventional wisdom in Washington and European capitals, that the only way to grow a modern Western economy was through ever-increasing government spending, unchecked mass migration and endless foreign imports.

So why that plays in is that Trump has reversed the trend on those pieces. We have reverse migration. Europe has not in their weaker for it. But you have to be careful. For example, he says we've never asked for anything. But the Danes certainly remember, they did send troops to Afghanistan. 43 of them died there. That's a lot for a country of 5 million people.

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Visit all family pharmacy.com slash kirk and use promo code kirk 10 to save 10%. Again, that's all family pharmacy.com slash kirk and use the code kirk 10. So I believe we are still working on getting Jack Pesovic here. But I wanted to kind of, I think I'm going to set this up here with for Jack here. There's these two clips that just need to be juxtaping. opposed side by side. So you've got this Finland president, Alexander Stubb, says Europe can defend itself unequivocally without the Americans, 316. First is a direct answer to the question of this panel. Can Europe defend itself? My answer

is unequivocally, yes. Without the Americans? Without the Americans. I mean, how? Look. But you're relying on them for these key elements. How would you, how would you do it at scale and at duration and at intensity? With an assumption that the United States would cut off completely, any kind of work. Well, if we look at the defense composure of Europe by and large, in a country like Finland, the bottom line is that if you ask me the question that can the Finnish military defend itself against a Russian attack,

the whole defense composure of the way in which you do it? Yes, we can. Then he gets asked about it later, and he says, oh, I love journalists. That's not what I said. 335. You've said earlier that Europe can defend itself without the Americans. If it comes down...

Not exact. That's not a quote. More or less. Let's... We'll go back to the transcript. Let's stick to the last in this one. More or less. More or less.

I love journalists. See, I love this juxtaposition because it's a total tell. They saber-rattle. They play big. They peacock. They puff up their chest. They say, oh, we don't need Trump. We don't need the Americans.

They don't really mean that. They don't really mean it because it's not true at all. It's not true. Though I would say it's better for us if we're interacting with them. We much more want them to start paying up but still be basically reliant on us versus if they decide America's getting a little wacky. They're taking land off of us. We need to toughen up and also make a new alliance that's not with them or worse yet with someone else. Well, and that's the whole China threat that they're putting out there. Email us your thoughts. Freedom at Charliekirk.com. I want to hear what you think are we is trump playing too rough with the europeans not not rough enough are you

do you think that they are bluffing in these entreaties this flirtation with china want to hear your thoughts freedom at charlie kirk dot com blake will be reading those in the next segment oh yeah yeah and so freedom at charley kirk dot com want to hear what your thoughts are on trump's uh tone his presentation at davos this morning but why those two clips i think are really interesting blake is listen to now okay i'm going to grain assault this one this come from r t which is state run media with Putin. So you've got to trust the translation here. But we'll play it. We'll give you the translation. But I think that Putin, when you think about it in terms of this Finnish president, makes a lot of sense here, 338.

But I also agree, Trump, with his character, with his, uh, uh, uh, uh, know, uh, uh, uh, stuptuosity. He will, um, will, you know, it will be able to, it It will be able, quickly, and will stand at the leg of the head of the head. And will need nashive a hvostick. What he says there is you'll see it

will happen quickly soon. They being the Europeans, the leaders, will all stand at the feet of the master, America, and will gently wag their tails. Everything will fall into place, you'll see. So he's basically observing that they're playing tough now.

They're signaling strength in all of this because they don't like Trump. They don't like, they feel like they're getting bullied. but Putin says they'll all fall in line. Joining us now is Jack Pesobok. He's live from Davos, Switzerland. He's been providing some behind the scenes clips that have been really fascinated to watch.

Jack, we're talking about this dynamic between European elites, the leadership, and President Trump. Obviously, there's tension. There's tension about Greenland. There's tension about NATO, NATO funding. There's flirtations with China. Tell us what you're feeling and seeing in the room. This dynamic between Atlantic,

allies. Yeah, Andrew, guys, that's exactly right. And, you know, we're here. We're in the room. I remember four years ago, my very first Davos calling into the Charlie Kirk show right after getting detained by the World Economic Forum police. So, you know, here we are four years later. We're inside the building. We're there in the room with President Trump. And he and the U.S. team, they're still kind of going around here. So he's holding those sideline meetings as we speak. There's going to be reception a little bit later. But you're right. There really is this sort of tension. There's this sort of, you know, I would say even kind of a cynicism of some of the European leaders saying that, oh, Trump, he's so ridiculous. This will never work. This will never happen. We can, you know,

we can be rude to him. But at the same time, you've come to understand that, and certainly in the room we saw this, there were a lot of people laughing at his jokes. They were sort of rolling with the punches, rolling with the laughter. And I think that this time around, given that he's been on the world stage for so many years, they've started to take that old Scott Adams phrase, They take him seriously, but they don't take him literally. And what that means is that they're serious about his intentions, but they understand that a lot of what he's doing, he's going into his salesman pitch, he's going into his arc,

he's saying things for effect over and over again. And it seemed that at least in the room, a lot of people got that. Yeah, it's very nicely mentioned that, Jack. No joke, I was reading the other day, the members of the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee, and one of them is this foreign policy blogger. And he actually had a thing he wrote on the Greenland drama, and he basically said, uh, Trump is always in negotiation mode.

And that means he's always trying to keep people off balance. He's like, he'll like shock them by being really aggressive with what he says. He'll consider any offer he's always ready to make a deal. And it's just so disorienting compared to how a normal person is. It just shocks them. And it kind of relies a bit on, you know, the old Nixon idea, the madman theory. Like part of his negotiation. position is to basically be like, I'm super serious. I'm ready to invade. I've thrown out the brakes on my car. I've thrown out the steering wheel. Nothing can stop me. And then he actually can just stop and make the deal very abruptly. I completely agree. This is what, again, this, we talked about this guy, Josh Wolf, Jack, who kind of, you know, he said this is classic Trump negotiation sequence. It goes like this. Signal acquisition, Denmark scoffs. Mentioned force, Denmark recoils.

insist on force loudly repeatedly Denmark reaches peak indignation others come to their side then pivot a purchase offer that eliminates Denmark's entire national debt 142 billion and nearly doubles greenland's GDP 450 billion and suddenly the question is no longer how dare you but wait how much what do you think jack no i think that's exactly the path that i'm trying to see this and if anyone wants to know what this is called it's literally called the art of the deal president trump wrote a book about this about 40 years ago where he outlines that specific policy in great detail. He says it's what he does every single time he's in a high-stakes negotiation. I think it's really interesting that so many people either haven't actually read that book,

haven't seen him do it a million times already, and that they still seem to fall for the same exact trick. Now, one of the things that I did think was interesting, you know, coming at it from a military perspective as well, that he did talk about the need for Greenland, not just we've heard for, you know, the Arctic shipping routes. We've also heard it from the national security in terms of those sea lanes. But he also talked about ballistic missile defense and really talked about the Golden Dome, those

intercontinental ballistic missiles, whether they're fired off from China, Russia, North Korea, even if Iran, if they were able to develop those long-range ballistic missiles, they would be flying them over the top, targeting Washington, D.C., and they would inevitably fall within the territory of Greenland, making Greenland a key position, key point for the United States in any type of missile defense. I haven't really seen him use that phrasing and use that phraseology, put it all together on the world stage. He kind of presaged it in an interview yesterday, but today was the really big one. And I think that for anyone who's looking at it seriously, he makes some very solid military points there.

Yeah, no, I agree. I think the ICBM argument is pretty strong. And I loved him name checking Carney, telling him to know his role, know his place. I think that's important, actually. There's another dynamic that's a little bit more on the domestic home front here, Jack. You've got Gavin Newsom wandering around. He's calling Scott Besson smug. Scott Besson had the line of the day, I think, hitting him back.

314. I think it's very, very ironic that, you know, Governor Newsom, who strikes me as Patrick Bateman meets Sparkle Beach Ken may be the only Californian who knows less about economics than Kamala Harris. He's here this week with his billionaire sugar daddy, Alex Soros. I've seen you behind the scenes. You've gotten iPhone video of Gavin Newsom. What the heck is going on with this? What does he think he's going to accomplish?

Is this just all about 2028 for him? I think it is. He's bird-dogging. He's trying to get his name out there. He wants people to put him in the same conversation as Trump. He's trying to put himself on the same level as Mark Carney. Trudeauke is here as well. Actually, Alex Soros just walked by a couple of minutes.

I saw him just kind of darting out the out the way before he could see me. And funny enough, I actually went up to that, that interview where I, you know, he was coming out here doing a gaggle. I walked up, you know, his, his press guy was trying to say, oh, no, Jack, no, not him, not Pesobic. I said, you know, guys, it'll be fine. Let me in. And I asked him a question, do you have any comment regarding Don Lemon and the agitators at the Minneapolis church up there in when they were barging in? He said he hadn't heard about it. I explained the situation. again, he said he hadn't heard about it. So we'll see what kind of, what kind of situation that is. But I did very quickly, you know, he caught my name. And I saw his press guy sort of saying, oh, that's Jack Posobic. And I mentioned him. I said, hey, hey, Governor Newsom, I was friends with Charlie. And Gavin, you know, he kind of touched his heart for a second there and said, he said, wow, wow.

And, you know, I think that was a really, you know, a real humanizing moment. And I remember Charlie and he had had that, that incredible interview that they had done together. So I thought maybe a little way to break the ice a little bit. Jack Posobic, God bless you, man. Stay safe. Keep getting those questions in with the world leaders. We appreciate, man. Talk to you soon.

We'll do it. Thanks, guys. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.