At the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Donald Trump spoke as only Donald Trump can.

He said he had transformed America in one year, tilted at windmills, bragged about secret weapons and laid out his claim for Greenland – promising not to use force – in a signature speech in which he underscored that the world order exists because of the United States.

“Without us, right now, you’d all be speaking German and a little Japanese, perhaps,” he said as he elaborated on World War II.

He started off his speech with: “It’s great to be back in beautiful Davos, Switzerland, and to address so many respected business leaders, so many friends, a few enemies.”

He said America was the economic engine of the world, and that “the United States is in the midst of the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in our country’s history.”

He said he had fired 270,000 bureaucrats who hated him at first but loved him now that they were getting jobs at much higher salaries in the private sector: “To make a country great, you can’t have all federal jobs.”

Tilting at windmills

On windmills, immigration and trade, he tore into Europe, while many of its leaders were in his presence at the conference.

“Certain places in Europe are not even recognisable,” he said. “Here in Europe, we've seen the fate that the radical left tried to impose upon America.”

In the US, he said at another point, “Instead of building ineffective, money-losing windmills, we’re taking them down and not approving any.

“There are windmills all over Europe,” he added. “There are windmills all over the place. And they are losers. One thing I’ve noticed is that the more windmills a country has, the more money that country loses and the worse that country is doing. China makes almost all of the windmills, and yet I haven’t been able to find any wind farms in China.”

He added: “China is very smart. They make them. They sell them for a fortune. They sell them to the stupid people that buy them, but they don’t use them themselves.”

Greenland: ‘Won’t use force’

He said no nation or group of nations is in any position to be able to secure Greenland other than the United States, but declared America would not use force.

“Hello, Mark,” he said at one point, addressing Nato chief Mark Rutte. “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.

“OK, 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 where we already had it as a trustee, but respectfully returned it back to Denmark not long ago after we defeated the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians and others in World War Two. We gave it back to them. We were a powerful force then, but we are a much more powerful force now,” he said.

US secret weapons

Trump said he had transformed the US military, and spoke about secret weapons only his country has.

“After I rebuilt the military in my first term and continue to do so today, we have a budget of $1.5 trillion. We’re bringing back battleships… one hundred times more powerful than the great battleships you saw in World War Two,” he said.

At another point, he said: “We’re a great power, much greater than people even understand. I think they found that out two weeks ago in Venezuela.”

Later on in the speech, he spelt it out again: “Two weeks ago, they saw weapons that nobody ever heard of. They weren’t able to fire one shot at us. They said, what happened? Everything was discombobulated. They said, we’ve got them in our sights. Press the trigger. And nothing happened. No anti-aircraft missiles went up. There was one that went up about 30 feet and crashed down right next to the people that sent it. They said, what the hell is going on?

“Those defensive systems were made by Russia and by China. So they’re going to go back to the drawing boards, I guess.”

Who’s daddy now?

Trump seemed to mix up Greenland and Iceland towards the latter half of his speech.

“….until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me,” he said about Nato and Europe.

“They called me ‘Daddy.’ The last time, a very smart man said, ‘He’s our daddy. He’s running it.’ I was like running it. I went from running it to being a terrible human being. But now what I’m asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located, that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection. It’s a very small ask compared to what we have given them for many, many decades.”

Jab at Mark Carney

“Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way,” Trump said, taking a jab at Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose speech a day earlier at Davos was widely hailed as a clarion call to the world to stand up against a bully Washington.

“They should be grateful also. But they’re not. I watched 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,” the US President said.

From Israel – “by the way, I told Bibi, stop taking credit for the dome; that’s our technology; that’s our stuff” – to Iran, “we did a lot,” Trump said, underscoring once again that America is the world’s greatest military power.

“A lot of big things. All perfectly executed. Everyone was perfectly executed. Somebody told me that. A military expert told me, ‘Sir, everything you’ve done has been perfectly executed’,” Trump said.

He added: “I said, ‘I know’.”