HUGH HEWITT: At Davos, Trump flexes US power and economic strength at home

When President Donald Trump agreed to address the “World Economic Forum” in Davos, he rescued that gathering from looming irrelevance — at least for a year. If the President of the United States attends a forum, the world’s collective attention will turn to it. 

The American public usually squints at this collection of would-be world big wigs — drawn from the world’s wealthiest, who are mostly not from our republic, but talking about it and how it and the world should work — and doesn’t like that look at all.

But President Trump came with some of his “A Team” on international economic and security matters, and Made Davos Great Again. People tuned in.

Two comments stood out to me.  On the president’s desire to acquire Greenland, he did make one thing very clear: “I won’t use force.” That simple statement buoyed markets around the world which had imagined some sort of intra-NATO kinetic conflict and panicked on Tuesday. That’s not going to happen, though the president has made it very clear he will use all levers open to him. “You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative,” the president said regarding Greenland. “You can say no, and we will remember,” he added. Message sent and received.

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The president’s speech was a reminder to the assembled globalists of the surging American economic growth, and of the enormous American economy behind it. But anyone who listened to the president’s press conference on Wednesday had heard most of the recap already.

It’s good to hammer those points home in every forum the president visits — from Switzerland to Iowa (where he’s off to next) because American voters’ perceptions of the economy will drive the midterms.

A reminder: the second set of midterm elections in the last four second terms of Republican presidencies — Ike’s in 1958, Nixon/Ford’s in 1974, Reagan’s in 1986 and George W. Bush’s in 2006 were tough going for the GOP, seeing, for example, the net loss of 49, 48, 5 and 30 House seats respectively. The tidal charts of American politics typically forecast bad news for the “in” party in that dreaded sixth year of a presidency.

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So it is a very smart move to repeat, and repeat, and repeat the good news on the economy.

Only when President Trump sat down for questions did anything new cross our screens. 

“Iran was the bully of the Middle East. They aren’t the bully anymore,” President Trump told his questioner in a brief 15-minute sit-down after his speech. The very polite Eurocrat didn’t think follow up to ask 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 waiting for the world to lose interest before doling out its punishments to the captives.

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We have no idea what President Trump will order the American military to do with regards to Iran. Not to punish them severely for the barbarity that has few if any parallels in this century other than 9/11 and 10/7 would be a terrible mistake.

The USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the strike group of warships gathered around it was ordered last week to close on Iran and almost certainly will be within striking range of Iran by this weekend if it isn’t already. Other military weaponry has been dispatched to the region. Our allies in Israel and among the Gulf States have had sufficient notice to prepare should Iran be foolish enough to respond to a punishment strike.

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But punishment should be forthcoming. To do nothing is to reward the savagery of the ayatollahs. “That which gets rewarded gets repeated” is among the oldest — and truest — of clichés. If Iran can mow down thousands of its own people and the world yawns in response, it will do so again, and again and again.

President Trump has lots of options. Pray he uses at least one of them to send the message: Never do that again. 

Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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