The Eric Metaxas Show - #47 - Larry Taunton

Episode Date: January 29, 2026

From Davos to Krakow, a wide ranging conversation with @LarryTaunton on what shifted at the World Economic Forum, why Trump’s message landed so hard, and what it says about globalism, elites, and ordinary people. TIMESTAMPS(0:00) Intro(0:26) Larry Taunton Joins(4:02) Did Trump Shake Davos?(5:23) Schwab Out, Larry Fink In(9:22) Davos Feels Like Twilight Zone?(15:21) Dollar Warning And Physical Gold(20:09) What Drives Trump To Fight?

My guest right now from Krakow, Poland, my friend, who was recently at Davos at the W.E.F. Larry Taunton, just great to see you and excited to talk to you by your experiences. Well, it's good to see you, Eric. And just so you will sound like an insider, I'm going to give you a little tip. they never say WEF. They say wef. But here's the trick. I don't want to sound like a wef insider. I want to sound like an anti-globalist, you know, patriarchal, biblically minded. You say wef and the people attend are wefers.

Yeah. I mean, no kidding. This is the way they refer to themselves. Wefers. Yeah. Anyway, yes, I was in Davos. I was there for the full thing. and I threatened.

I have to tell my audience, I don't even know if I've mentioned it. I threatened to be there. I was actually had my flights booked. I had everything booked. And I was going to be there. No, no, you did not. That was the problem.

You did not have a place to stay booked. Well, I was going to stay in Zurich, actually, if it broke down that way. But the folks that invited me said that they would get us a place to stay. And so we were kind of waiting to hear from them and never heard from them. and it was it's the it's the USA house uh whatever it was I was going to give a speech there and it just it just got too complicated um so I did not go to Davos but you what was there on your

behalf yeah well you were there on behalf of all of us my friend and uh I want to you know want to hear about it so you're in crackout Poland right now yeah which is extraordinary now why before we get into davos and and weft why are you in in crack out well there's a couple little projects that I was working on traveling with me and he may come crashing through the door at some moments is Lawrence Fox, but he's in his room giving an interview right now to somebody else. And if he wraps up early, I told him he should come and crash this interview over here. But I have, as you know, a couple of times a year, I'm gone for a significant period of time where I hit a variety of projects. It might be people I'm meeting with. It might be a speaking engagement or something of some kind.

In this case, it was the World Economic Forum. The others will be revealed as I go along. But in Krakow, I wanted to take Lawrence to Auschwitz. And so I took him there yesterday. That was my third visit there. But I wanted him to see that. And then today, we both want to see something. Neither of us had ever seen before that I've been. fascinated to see since my student days, my graduate student days in studying socialism, Marxism, and all that stuff. And it's called Nova Huta, Novahuta, which in Polish is new ironworks, was the Lenin Ironworks, and it's spelled N-O-W-A, but pronounced Nova. And anyway, it's quite fascinating. It was a whole city that the Soviets, had planned as a model city to say this is socialism.

And it became a... A Patempton city. Yeah, yeah. Well, except that it's real. But it all backfired on them because it became, ironically, it became a hob of resistance to communism. And anyway, so I wanted to go and see that. And I've got a couple of projects related to that that I'm working.

on, but a couple of days ago, a few days ago, I was at the World Economic Forum. Yes, I heard about that. Okay, so what happened at the World Economic Forum, which I, I guess. Keep talking. No, I'm just, I'm just trying to frame it. I can't remember if I spoke about it last week or whatever. But basically, something astonishing happened as far as I could tell. And it wasn't that Trump went there and was kind of battling with the globalists and whatever.

He went there like a conquering Caesar. He goes in and without even any angst is just speaking truth. And it's kind of like the classic vibe shift term that people use. It was like the vibe shift was astonishing. It was really like globalism is. dead. And now Trump's going to come in and he's going to talk from a point of view of common sense. And he's going to, you know, in a sense, by talking about reality and truth, he's going to be underscoring the fact that globalism and the W.EF is dead. I've never seen anything quite like it, that he spoke from a position of such tremendous confidence that it was that to me was the big news.

Yeah, that's that really hung over this year's World Economic Forum annual Coven. And, you know, add to that that, you know, this was the first time in 55 years. In 55 years, Klaus Schwab, who was founder and sole chairman of the World Economic Forum, founded it in 1971, has presided over it for 55 straight years. And then they got rid of him last year. the octogenarian and they replaced him. They felt they needed a window front that was really more reflective of the times and the common man. So what did they do?

They went and appointed Black Rock CEO, Larry Think, who is a billionaire. The appropriately named Larry Think. He's a small-time billionaire compared to say Bill Gates and Elon Musk, but he He manages 12 trillion. Yes, that's T as in tango. He manages 12 trillion in assets. So he's a, he's a heavy hitter. And then the other co-chair is Andre Hoffman, who is the CEO of Roche Holdings, the, the largest family-owned pharmaceutical company in the world because everybody loves pharmaceuticals, right? So it made sense to appoint these two guys. I'm getting boosted right now. Well, I thought that Schwab's absence was going to, you know, that was really going to be the talk of the Wef. There was no mention of him, you know, anywhere. Not in over lunch tables, not in corridors that I heard.

I didn't encounter it once. And so the talk became, to your point, it became Trump. And Trump was only there for a day. You know, he flew in and then he was gone. He spoke on, where do he speak on? I think the second day of the World Economic Forum, I think that's right, maybe the third. But anyway, I heard the entire speech. I thought that the speech was mischaracterized by everybody.

Even news sites that were friendly to Trump, I thought missed. I thought, you know, did these people actually watch the speech? Or did they just read tweets about it, you know, or something? So, you know, the left mischaracterized it as like he was a crazy man and went in there all guns blazing. He was a bully, you know, this kind of thing. Others, I thought, missed the point. What was the thesis of his address? And it was to me what made the address both remarkable and wonderful. His thesis wasn't NATO. It wasn't Greenland. It wasn't the war in Ukraine. It wasn't, you know, the inefficiency of windmills and green energy. It wasn't about borders. It wasn't about the economy. All things that he talked about. The thesis that ran through all of those, the hub of his talk, was the American citizen. And that's quote, end quote, the American citizen. And all those other things were to spokes off of that wheel. All of it related back to the American citizen. So when he was

talking about Greenland, why does he want it to protect the American people? When he talked about borders, what was that for? To protect the American people? When he was talking about the economy, he said, we're going to raise living standards for American citizens higher than they've ever been. When he was talking about NATO, he was talking about saving the American taxpayer money. And, well, you guys owe us. And we've never asked for anything. Now we are. We want Greenland. And when he talked about Ukraine, he was talking about saving lives, and he was talking about saving the American taxpayer. The whole theme was the American citizen. And in a place like, no, it's interesting, Eric, in a place like Davos, I can't begin to tell you how jarring a message like that is.

And that's because the World Economic Forum slogan is improving the state of the world. I liken it to Rod Serling's ESOP, you know, fable-like episode of Twilight Zone, where aliens appear on Earth. That's my favorite episode. I'm a producer here. Go ahead. This is my favorite episode starring Ted Knight, Lurch from the Adam family. Yes. And they want to know what is the, you know, agenda of these aliens.

What's their mission? And so one of them sits and takes a polygraph. and he says to serve man. And he passes the polygraph. Well, it turns out that to serve man is a cookbook. It's a recipe, full of recipes for eating human beings. This is the World Economic Forum. The World Economic Forum's slogan to improve the state of the world

has nothing to do with improving the lives of people. Indeed, they want to reduce the number of people on the planet. So for Trump to come in to a place like Davos and say, I'm not here for the world. I'm not here, you know, for some faceless, you know, faceless masses. I'm here on behalf of the American people. Now, I do hope that some of the things we do are helpful to other countries. I was just going to jump in and say, by the way, I misspoke. I said Ted Knight, that's Ted Baxter.

No, Ted Cassidy played the role of Lurch and the Adams family. and plays the role. I was thinking it was Richard Kiel, but you're right. And no, no, Richard Kiel also is in that episode, unless I'm conflating them. But anyway, we know Richard Kiel is in there. But to put that aside, although you know I'd much rather talk about the Twilight Zone, honestly, if, this is, everybody needs to understand this. If America is strong, if America is strong, if American citizens,

are blessed and thriving. The whole world benefits. That is a fact. It is not a zero-sum game, ladies and gentlemen. America has been a force for good since its beginning, maybe not perfect, but a tremendous force for good, and a strong America will bless the whole world. And we need to understand that.

If you actually care about the world, you have to want to bless America. But if you have a Marxist-Globalist worldview, you believe in a zero-sum-sum, game and you think a strong America is a threat to the rest of the world. That is a lie, but that's what the globalists believe. And so for Trump to go in there and to say this, you know, this is big news for them. And most of them can't comprehend it because they have a fundamentally Marxist worldview. Yeah. And it's I honestly, you know, if I could, I would

want to sit down with Trump. If he used a teleprompter, he used it exactly as that just with prompts, not with a full-fledged speech because he did what he does. He sometimes went down rabbit holes and got off topic. But if I could go through and edit out, you know, some of those times where he was going down rabbit holes that, you know, were interesting, but then just just put the whole speech together where he's hitting point by point all of these things and how they relate back to the American citizen is a great speech.

Now, I'm not going to go as far as Glenn Beck and say it was the great speech by any president ever. I mean, you know, the Gettysburg address was pretty good, and Washington's, you know, farewell address was, was pretty good, too. So I'm not going to go that far, but I am going to say that we become so accustomed to politicians having a level of malevolence towards the people they're elected to serve. So for a politician, and more than that, for there are no poor people who are at Davos. Common Man is not represented anywhere in Davos. I went even over, you know, when you go down the promenade, the main, you know, main street, as it were, in Davos, all the shops are kind of rented out to various exhibits.

So loads of countries have exhibits along there. So you go along and there's USA House, which is where you are going to be. And then there's Nigeria house and there's Columbia House and there's France House and Italy House and so on. And you just keep going. I wanted to go over to Nigeria House and ask them questions about the persecution of Christians there. As you know, I've been there. And it was all rich people. And more than that, it was white people.

And I thought this is weird. I mean, Nigeria, there's not a white man in that country. He was not a missionary, a government official. or working for an oil company. You know, but yet, you know, you've got these people all representing Nigeria over there wearing Gucci, you know, and all this kind of stuff. And I thought, this is so weird, there's no one here representing the common man. But they found representation in a billionaire by the name of Donald Trump, which I thought was pretty amazing. So Trump comes along and says, look, we're going to improve life for American citizens.

That's what I'm here to do. And green energy is garbage. We're not doing that. You guys could keep going that way if you want to. And you keep throwing away the lives of Ukrainians in a pointless war if you want to do. We're not doing that. And on and on and on. And it was great.

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team Trump, whether you know it or not. And what he's talking about is a recalibration. It's kind of like the market has gotten, you know, out of whack. And we need to recalibrate. For example, let's talk about the worth of America to the NATO countries. Let's talk about worth America to the European countries. You want to play the game like we're all buddy-buddies. You haven't paid your fair share. You've done nothing. We've effectively been paying your rent for decades. We'd like you to be a little grateful. We'd like you to acknowledge that we have been paying your rent for decades. Just to say that, they lose their minds because they can't handle the truth. The truth is that without America, there is no NATO. Well, and he even said at one point,

which was hilarious, Eric, I'm sure you heard it then. He said, if it weren't for us, you'd be speaking German and a little Japanese, which was hilarious. And I'm sure. offensive to some of the people there. But Trump, this idea that Trump came in guns blazing, he was funny. You know, when he brought up a Macron, you know, who had worn sunglasses, mirror sunglasses when he spoke. And Trump said, you know, I called up Emmanuel Macron about the cost of these pharmaceuticals. And he saw him yesterday. He's wearing these sunglasses, these beautiful sunglasses. What the hell was that? I mean, the whole audience just roared. You know, when he said that. So, you know, Trump, Trump has a kind of, you know, charm to him. And he's not an unreasonable man. At his core, he is a businessman. And he wants to negotiate. And he was there to negotiate. And so all of this posturing about we're going to defend Greenland and we're going to send troops to defend Greenland from Trump invasion. That was all just posturing and nonsense. There was never any point of that. It's so funny is that people don't speak that.

language. I mean, look, you and I've experienced this. Sometimes you speak to a humorless liberal, they can't understand you. And if you say something funny or arch or edgy, they interpret it like a computer would interpret it. They don't have any facial recognition. It's like autistic. They cannot really get it. They don't speak the language of humor or nuance. And so Trump is their worst nightmare because when he says, you know, we may go into Greenland, you know, with tanks or whatever. They have no ability to figure out what he's actually saying. So they take it literally.

And then they report that, you know, he said, by the way, I have to say this. Nobody commented on this except for me, I think. When he misspoke and said Iceland when he meant Greenland, I guarantee that was intentional. He plays the game where he basically refers to Greenland as a chunk of ice a piece of ice. But he's trying to denigrate it.

He's trying to deliberately lower the market value so that they stop pretending like it's this great thing that America is looking for. It's nothing. It's a piece of ice. So when he said Iceland a couple of times, that's what he does. He'll do that deliberately. He plays that game. He's played that game with world leaders where he'll refer to them in a certain way by

their first name, which is disrespectful. It's like, am I right in saying, at one point I was distracted by someone and I didn't quite hear, but it sounded like he was talking about Ursula von der Leyen having a conversation with her on the phone. I'm assuming it's her. And then she was kind of, you know, it was a conversation over tariffs. And he said she was kind of threatening some sort of retaliatory tariffs. And he said, if you do that, then I'm just going to jack up tariffs even more. And then he said, you know, I got to say, I just don't like her very much. Oh. Oh. I mean, this is.

It was hard. Was that who he was talking about? Was Russell Bonderline? Honestly, I don't know. I think so. But I have to tell you, I just don't like her very much. That is the genius of President Trump. It's like having Don Rickles as president. You don't know what he's saying. Where it's like having Groucho Marx. Even when he insults you, you have to laugh. It's just complete truth telling. It's a flamethrower of truth. And these folks can't handle it. They're not used to it. It's the antithesis of the BS. diplomatic uniparty language that we've all been, you know, subjected to for decades in our, in our lives. So it was, it was so amazing to me that he went there into the lion's den. I don't, I don't know. We've never seen anything like it, Larry. You have to be honest, we've never, ever seen anything like it.

Yeah, we haven't. And I'm so grateful for him, not because I agree with absolutely everything Trump does. I think his plan for Gaza is completely unworkable. But, you know, he loves his country. And I would point out what I think is very significant. And I'm not the first one to do this. Others have done it before me. But when you look at a lot of these lefties who are childless or maybe one child or, you know, divorced and unhappy, you know, kind of people. And then you compare that with, with Trump, in spite of, you know, his flaws, Trump has a very large, you know, family, children, grandchildren, who are all kind of rowing in the same direction. And I think that matters because something that motivates me in my own work is, you know, I'm now a granddad. And I was always, I was always motivated on behalf of my own children.

But, you know, I want it set on my tombstone. He gave everything for his God and for prosperity. Whether I win or not, I don't control that. That's up to God. But I want it said that I gave everything. I left it all on the field. And why? Because future generations matter.

They matter. And I want my children, my grandchildren, to have the world that I had. And the opportunities that I had, imperfect world that it was, It was a better world than the one they've inherited. And I think this motivates Trump. You know, listen, he's got enough money to go buy an island and live out, you know, his twilight years and forget all this. But he doesn't. And that's because he loves his country and he loves his grandchildren.

And that would not be nearly as much fun as what he's doing right now. He's having a ton of fun saving West. Except for Minnesota. What's that? I said except for Minnesota. Well, except for it. Well, that's exactly right. But he's saving the West.

Larry, we're at a time. It's just always great to speak with you. Give my love to the other Larry in your life, Lawrence Fox, who hasn't had a chance to bust through that door yet. But it's just great to know you brothers are together. I wish I could be with you. But it's just great to see you and we'll talk to you again soon. Very grateful for your voice.

Yeah, we're about to go to dinner right now. So great to talk to you too, Eric. All right. Talk to you soon. Thank you. Hey there, folks. I want to tell you about a coffee company. I genuinely admire 10 Boom Coffee, inspired by the faith and courage of the 10 Boom family. This isn't just great coffee. It's coffee with a mission. Ethically sourced, expertly roasted, and rooted in Christian values. If you care about what you consume and who it supports, this is coffee you can feel good about. Go to 10 Boomcoffee.com. Use promo code Eric for 15% off your order.

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