Trump ally defends Greenland-Iceland mix-ups: 'This is his brand'

U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2026. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Donald Trump appeared to repeatedly mix up Greenland with another country during his Wednesday speech before the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, prompting one GOP ally to defend the slip-ups as part of "his brand."

Trump's speech was widely criticized, as many of his recent speeches have been, as rambling, unfocused and low energy, with numerous observers claiming that he seemed on the verge of falling asleep. A large portion of the speech focused on Greenland, the autonomous Arctic territory of Denmark that he had been obsessed with annexing for the U.S. Despite all the attention he had been putting on the island, at multiple points in the speech, he seemingly confused it with Iceland, the sovereign island nation situated around 300 kilometers southeast of Greenland.

During a Wednesday evening appearance on CNN, T.W. Arrighi, a former staffer for Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both staunch MAGA supporters, came to Trump's defense over the repeated gaffe, per a report from Mediaite.

"'Cause this is the same speech he would've given last year, the year before, the year before that," Arrighi said in response to host Abby Phillip, who asked why the mix-up was not more concerning to everybody. "This is his brand."

Arrighi's defense of the president prompted a heated response from reporter Tara Palmeri, who interjected, "He wanted to invade Greenland and he called it Iceland!"

Bakari Sellers, a former congressman turned political pundit for CNN, also weighed in, arguing that the gaffes were in line with persistent concerns about Trump's age and mental acuity.

"The disappointing part about the tenor of this conversation is that we laugh it off and we excuse it as just Donald Trump, or at least something he would've done before," Sellers said. "The comparison I look at is that Donald Trump's mental acuity, even before he aged, was mediocre at best. It's somebody who came from a failed business background. It's somebody who believes that they were born, that they hit a home run, they were born on third base. His daddy gave him $1 million to start his business. This is somebody who's failed, and failed, and failed."

Palmeri noted the similarities between Trump's rambling addresses and mix-ups to similar instances from Joe Biden. The former president mixed up the names of countries multiple times in public addresses, as Trump did on Wednesday, though his gaffes often prompted considerably more outrage from Republicans over his mental acuity.

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