White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against reports that President Donald Trump repeatedly mixed up Greenland and Iceland during a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Karoline Leavitt defends Donald Trump
During his keynote address, Donald Trump detailed his contentious interest in the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, but repeatedly substituted it for the nation of Iceland. The error occurred multiple times as he discussed trade and defense. “I’m helping Europe, I’m helping NATO, and until the last few days, when I told them about Iceland, they loved me,” Trump told the crowd.
He later 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’s already costs a lot of money.” In a separate part of the speech, he correctly referenced Greenland, calling it a “piece of ice.”
After this, when a reporter highlighted the repeated errors on social media, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a shocking reply. She disputed the characterization entirely, shifting blame to the journalist. “No he didn’t,” Leavitt wrote on X in response to a reporter accurately describing the speech, sharing a Google result featuring an image of Greenland. “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.”
This defense contradicted the clear and verifiable record of the speech, where Trump used the wrong country’s name four separate times. The Davos incident was not an isolated mistake. Just a day earlier, during a White House press conference, Trump stated, “As an example, Iceland – without tariffs, they wouldn’t even be talking to us about it,” while discussing Greenland.
Furthermore, the geographical errors extended beyond the Nordic mix-up. During the same Davos speech, Donald Trump once again mispronounced Azerbaijan as “Aberbaijan,” though he correctly identified Armenia, a country he had previously mistaken for Albania.
