Politics
Column: Davos, where the rich and powerful go to show off their ignorance
Those of us who diligently follow financial forecasts know that the go-to place for mapping out the course of the economy over the coming 12 months is Davos, Switzerland, the host city of the annual World Economic Forum every January.
Rule of thumb: Listen closely to what the gathered business and political leaders predict, then take the other side. Or as the American economist Kenneth Rogoff said in 2020:
“No matter how improbable, the event most likely to happen is the opposite of whatever the Davos consensus is.”
“I think this negative talk about MAGA is going to hurt Biden’s electoral campaign.”
— Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase CEO
It’s hard to find a single explanation for the long history of Davos attendees missing the signs of impending world recessions or confidently forecasting recessions that never arrive (among other errors).
But an interview of Jamie Dimon, the chair and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase & Co., aired Wednesday morning on CNBC offers a clue: The potentates and plutocrats come to Davos without the slightest clue of what they’re talking about.
As he basked in the limelight of a CNBC kiosk with snow-flecked Davos evergreens behind him and earnest, parka-garbed CNBC anchors in front of him, Dimon unburdened himself of some remarkably delusional judgments of current affairs and recent politics.
Dimon’s general take on politics was that Donald Trump wasn’t that bad as a president, and therefore Democrats should be more careful about attacking him and his supporters. “I think this negative talk about MAGA is going to hurt Biden’s electoral campaign,” he said.
Dimon attempted to get into the minds of MAGA supporters. “I don’t think they’re voting for Trump ’cause it’s family values,” he said.
“Be honest,” he said. Trump is “kinda right about NATO. Kinda right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked. … I don’t like how he said things about Mexico, but he wasn’t wrong about some of these critical issues, and that’s why they’re voting for him.”
We’ll have to unpack some of this ourselves, because Dimon’s CNBC interlocutors sat by silently as he spouted off. If they bestirred themselves to ask “how is he right?” those questions and his answers didn’t make it into the broadcast. So let’s begin.
Is Trump “kinda right about NATO”? While he was president, he told European Commission members (at Davos!), that “if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” according to Thierry Breton, a French commissioner. He said Trump added: “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”
Trump’s repeated promise to withdraw from NATO prompted Congress to insert a provision in the annual Defense Appropriations Act barring any president from quitting NATO without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. The act, including that provision, was signed into law by President Biden in December.
If Dimon was referring to Trump’s withdrawal promise or his denigration of the mutual defense provision of the NATO treaty, which commits all NATO members to defending against an attack on any of them, then Dimon’s assertion contradicts his own opinion of the necessity of supporting Ukraine against Russia in the CNBC interview.
That battle “is about freedom and democracy for the free world,” Dimon said, urging American political leaders to explain to voters why supporting Ukraine is necessary. Ukraine “may be about whether the world is free and safe for democracy for a hundred years.” Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO, but supporting a European country under attack is obviously incompatible with quitting NATO.
Immigration? Trump’s most recent notable comment on this topic is that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” uttered at a Dec. 17 rally in New Hampshire. Was he “kinda right” about that?
The Trump administration’s immigration policy encompassed the outstandingly inhumane practice of family separation, under which thousands of children were forcibly removed from their families on this side of the southern border; as many as 1,000 children are still missing. Was that “kinda right”?
In October, the Biden administration settled a lawsuit over the policy by allowing families to remain in the U.S. while they search for their children and committed to ceasing family separations for eight years.
Dimon stated during the interview that securing the border is imperative. He wasn’t asked about, and didn’t mention, who’s responsible for blocking a sensible immigration policy. It’s Trump’s party: The House GOP caucus is refusing to accept a deal on immigration unless it includes draconian provisions that would ban almost all asylum and mandate the construction of a border wall — something that Trump was unable to accomplish himself during his four years in office.
Did tax reform work? No doubt the 2017 tax reform worked for taxpayers in Dimon’s class and corporations like his. But there’s is no discernible evidence that it achieved what its GOP sponsors claimed were its goals, growing the economy and raising so much government revenue that it would “pay for itself.”
As a share of gross domestic product, federal tax receipts plummeted after the 2017 tax cuts to 16% in 2020 from 17.4% in 2016. Nor did the tax cuts have any noticeable effect on wages, despite promises from Trump officials that average wages would be pumped up by $3,000 to $7,000 per worker.
The study that predicted such an outcome, observed Republican economist Bruce R. Bartlett in Senate testimony last May, was “more of a public relations document than a serious analysis; once its purpose was served and the legislation enacted, it was forgotten.”
The tax cuts did have a noticeable effect in the world Dimon occupies, however. The average tax rate paid by his corporation, JPMorgan Chase & Co., fell to 24.5% of net income in the five years since the cuts from 38.6% in the five years before their enactment.
It may be true or at least arguable, as Dimon said, that Trump “grew the economy quite well.” But there’s no question that in many respects his record pales in comparison to his successor’s.
In the first three years of his term — leaving aside the pandemic year of 2020, when employment cratered — Trump achieved average annual job growth of about 289,000. In the latest two years of Biden’s term — leaving aside the post-pandemic year of 2021, when jobs recovered strongly from the prior year’s losses — jobs grew by an average 481,000 a year.
One can only speculate about the source of Dimon’s view about MAGA politics. He’s a highly intelligent and accomplished executive; no one without his ability and perspicacity could have remained CEO of the nation’s largest bank company for 18 years and its chairman for 17. Much of what he has had to say over that period has been well worth hearing, especially when it concerns business, economics and finance.
Yet in issuing political proclamations, he sounds like someone out of his lane. It’s hardly unusual for someone so accomplished in one field and so rich to feel the impulse to stray into topics well beyond his field of expertise, especially when his opinions are sought by sycophantic interviewers in public. Who could resist?
That’s also why the cocksure predictions issuing from Davos year after year are so risibly unreliable, the vision of the future so clouded.
In 2022, for instance, the then-president of FTX.US, the cryptocurrency firm’s American unit, told attendees that the firm was in a “very good spot” and had so much capital it would soon be looking for acquisitions. The following year, its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was charged with fraud and the firm collapsed. That same year, Davos was certain that a recession in Europe was inevitable; it still hasn’t happened.
In 2008, no one at Davos noticed that the subprime crisis was erupting and therefore that it would produce a major recession. In 2016, no one at Davos expected Trump to win the election or the U.K. to stage Brexit, its departure from the European Union. The following year, the Davos organizers were so mortified that they actually scheduled a session on why the assembled pundits got so much so wrong.
The fact is that bringing together a host of successful but self-important luminaries to forecast the future is a mug’s game. They’re wrapped up in their own worlds and insulated from what’s happening on the ground.
Nor are they accustomed to being challenged in public. One such uncommon moment occurred during a panel at the 2019 meeting, discussing a proposal by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for a 70% tax rate on income over $10 million.
Panelist Michael Dell, the computer entrepreneur, scoffed. “Name a country where that’s worked, ever,” he said.
Dell’s fellow panelist, economist Erik Brynjolfsson (then of MIT, now of Stanford), jumped right in. “The United States,” he said. “From about the 1930s through about the 1960s. … And those were actually pretty good years for growth. … There’s actually a lot of economics that suggests that it’s not necessarily going to hurt growth.”
Dell had nothing to say. The panel moderator, Heather Long of the Washington Post, did, however. The top tax rate exceeded 70% only “briefly, in the 1980s,” she said.
Not so. The top tax rate in the U.S., as Brynjolfsson said, exceeded 70% from 1936 until 1982, peaking at 94% in 1944-1945. And those decades encompassed some of America’s most prosperous periods.
But getting something so fundamental so wrong? Over the World Economic Forum’s 53-year history, that’s become a tradition.
Politics
Mamdani’s response to Trump’s Iran strike sparks conservative backlash: ‘Rooting for the ayatollah’
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New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani is facing blowback from conservatives on social media over his post condemning the U.S. attack on Iran that led to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
On Saturday, as a joint strike on Iran by the United States and Israel was developing, Mamdani blasted the Trump administration’s decision in a post on X that has been viewed roughly 20 million times.
“Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression,” Mamdani wrote.
“Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Mamdani said Americans prefer “relief from the affordability crisis” before speaking directly to Iranians in New York City.
“You are part of the fabric of this city — you are our neighbors, small business owners, students, artists, workers, and community leaders,” Mamdani said. “You will be safe here.”
The post was quickly slammed by conservatives on social media making the case that Mamdani’s response appeared sympathetic to Iran’s brutal regime and pointing to his lack of public reaction to the Iranian protesters killed in recent years.
“Comrade Mayor is rooting for the Ayatollah,” GOP Sen. Ted Cruz posted on X. “They can chant together.”
OBAMA OFFICIAL WHO BACKED IRAN DEAL SPARKS ONLINE OUTRAGE WITH REACTION TO TRUMP’S STRIKE: ‘SIT THIS ONE OUT’
“Do u say anything pro American ?” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade posted on X. “do u know any Iranians – ? they hate @fr_Khamenei they celebrate his death, you should be celebrating his death ! hes killed thousands of American’s and just killed 30k Iranians, did u even say a word about that? You are an embarrassment !! Please quit.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions Pam Bondi, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing in Hart building Jan. 15, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
“I don’t feel safe in New York listening to someone like you, Mamdani, who sympathizes with the regime that killed more than 30,000 unarmed Iranians in less than 24 hours,” Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad posted on X.
“We Iranians do not allow you to lecture us about war while you had nothing to say when the Islamic Republic shot schoolgirls and blinded more than 10,000 innocent people in the streets. You were busy celebrating the hijab while women of my beloved country Iran were jailed and raped by Islamic Security forces for removing it.
“And NOW you find your voice to defend the regime? No. I will not let you claim the moral high ground. The people of Iran want to be free. Where were you when they needed solidarity?”
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“How is it that you can’t differentiate between good and evil?” Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman posted on X. “Why is this so hard for you?”
“It takes a particular kind of audacity, or ignorance, for a city mayor to appoint himself the conscience of American foreign policy while his constituents step over garbage on their way to work,” GOP Rep. Nancy Mace posted on X. “History will not remember his bravery. It will not remember him at all.”
“Iranian New Yorkers are thrilled today and see right through you,” Republican New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino posted on X.
Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management LP, speaks during the WSJ D.Live global technology conference in Laguna Beach, Calif., Oct. 17, 2017. (Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
“When Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, UAE, Bahrain all support today’s operation eliminating world’s #1 sponsor of terror, but New York City’s Mayor @ZohranMamdani is shilling for Iran,” Republican New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov posted on X.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani’s office for comment.
Shortly after Mamdani’s post, it was announced by President Trump and Israeli officials that the military operation resulted in Khamenei’s death.
Israeli leaders confirmed Khamenei’s compound and offices were reduced to rubble early Saturday after a targeted strike in downtown Tehran.
“Khamenei was the contemporary Middle East’s longest-serving autocrat. He did not get to be that way by being a gambler. Khamenei was an ideologue, but one who ruthlessly pursued the preservation and protection of his ideology, often taking two steps forward and one step back,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of FDD’s Iran program, told Fox News Digital.
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WASHINGTON — For a decade, President Trump promised to end what he calls forever wars, casting himself as a leader opposed to prolonged conflicts in the Middle East and who would rather pursue peace in the world.
Now, early in his second term, Trump is taking military action against Iran that could expand well beyond a limited effort to halt the country’s nuclear program.
In a video posted on Truth Social, the commander in chief said American forces also plan to “raze their missile industry to the ground” and “annihilate their navy.” He warned members of Iran’s military to surrender or “face certain death.” And urged the Iranian people to take the moment as an opportunity to rise up against their government.
“This regime will soon learn that no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces,” Trump said.
A few hours after relaying that message, Trump confirmed in a separate social media post that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was among those killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes. Even with his death, Trump said that “the heavy and pinpoint bombing” would continue in Iran “as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
Trump, who has been considering a strike on Iran for several weeks, acknowledged he reached the decision to attack Iran while aware of the human toll that could come with it.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties. That often happens in war,” he said. “But we are doing this, not for now, we are doing this for the future, and it is a noble mission.”
Trump’s military campaign in Iran is a sharp turn in tone for a president who has long been critical of open-ended conflicts in the Middle East, and marks a shift from an America-first agenda message that helped him return to the White House.
“I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars,” Trump said in his November 2024 victory speech as he promised to focus national resources on domestic priorities rather than foreign conflicts.
As Trump advocated to bring home American forces from deployments around the world and to withdraw from key defense treaties, his position resonated with a war-weary electorate in the lead-up to the election.
Fewer than six in 10 Americans (56%) believed the United States should take an active role in world affairs ahead of the election — the second-lowest level recorded since the question was first asked in 1974, according to polling by the Council on Foreign Affairs.
Trump’s posture on war in the Middle East had been largely consistent before he ran for office.
In 2013, he criticized then-President Obama’s negotiations with Tehran, predicting in a post on Twitter that Obama would “attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly.” That same year, Trump warned that “our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III.”
And in a heated February 2016 debate, Trump attacked former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, stating that his brother George W. Bush lied about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities to get the U.S. into the Iraq war. Trump called the Iraq war a “big, fat mistake” that “destabilized the Middle East.”
“They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction. There were none, and they knew there were none,” he said.
At the time of the Iraq war, however, Trump had said he supported it.
Trump’s confrontation with Iran bears little resemblance to his earlier rebukes.
Trump has yet to present evidence of an imminent threat to the United States from Iran’s nuclear program — a capability he claimed to have “obliterated” just eight months ago — and has instead framed the military campaign as one to ensure Tehran never develops nuclear weapons at all.
“It is a very simple message,” he said. “They will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Trump’s shift has already drawn the attention of congressional Democrats, many of whom are calling the president out for backing out on his promise to end foreign wars — and are demanding that he involve Congress in any further military actions.
“Regardless of what the President may think or say, he does not enjoy a blank check to launch large-scale military operations without a clear strategy, without any transparency or public debate, and not without Congressional approval,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said.
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) criticized Trump for “drawing the country into yet another foreign war that Americans don’t want and Congress has not authorized.”
The military involvement in Iran is not the first time that members of Congress have complained about the Trump administration’s willingness to sideline the legislative branch on decisions that could trigger broader conflicts this year.
In January, Trump ordered military forces to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and said the United States would run the sovereign nation until further notice. He threatened military action in Colombia, whose leftist President Gustavo Petro has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics.
Trump has alienated allied nations when he said he was willing to send American troops to seize Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. And on Friday, he said U.S. is in talks with Havana and raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover of Cuba” without offering any details on what he meant.
His actions have coincided with his annoyance at not being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At one point, the president said he no longer felt an “obligation to think purely of Peace” because he didn’t get the recognition.
Trump’s shifting tone, and his use of violent war imagery in his pretaped remarks about Iran, have rattled even part of his base.
“I did not campaign for this. I did not donate money for this,” said former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative who recently left Congress after a bitter fight with Trump. “This is not what we thought MAGA was supposed to be. Shame!”
Republican leaders, however, are largely standing behind the president.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Iran “posed a clear and unacceptable threat” to the United States and has refused “the diplomatic off-ramps.” House Speaker Mike Johnson (D-La.) said Trump took the action after exhausting “every effort to pursue peaceful and diplomatic solutions.”
Other top Republican lawmakers rallied behind Trump, too.
“The butcher’s bill has finally come due for the ayatollahs,” Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in a post on X. “May God bless and protect our troops on this vital mission of vengeance, and justice, and safety.”
Politics
Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
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Iran launched missile and drone strikes targeting U.S. military facilities in multiple Middle Eastern countries Friday, retaliating after coordinated U.S.–Israeli strikes on Iranian military and nuclear-linked sites.
Explosions were reported in or near areas hosting American forces in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Jordan, according to regional officials and state media accounts. Several of those governments said their air defense systems intercepted incoming projectiles.
It remains unclear whether any U.S. service members were killed or injured, and the extent of potential damage to American facilities has not yet been confirmed. U.S. officials have not publicly released casualty figures or formal damage assessments.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) described the operation as a direct response to what Tehran called “aggression” against Iranian territory earlier in the day. Iranian officials claimed they targeted U.S. military infrastructure and command facilities.
Explosions were reported in or near areas hosting American forces in Bahrain, pictured above. (Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Adelola Tinubu/U.S. Naval Forces Central Command/U.S. 5th Fleet )
The United States military earlier carried out strikes against what officials described as high-value Iranian targets, including IRGC facilities, naval assets and underground sites believed to be associated with Iran’s nuclear program. One U.S. official told Fox News that American forces had “suppressed” Iranian air defenses in the initial wave of strikes.
Tomahawk cruise missiles were used in the opening phase of the U.S. operation, according to a U.S. official. The campaign was described as a multi-geographic operation designed to overwhelm Iran’s defensive capabilities and could continue for multiple days. Officials also indicated the U.S. employed one-way attack drones in combat for the first time.
IF KHAMENEI FALLS, WHO TAKES IRAN? STRIKES WILL EXPOSE POWER VACUUM — AND THE IRGC’S GRIP
Smoke rises after reported Iranian missile attacks, following strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran, in Manama, Bahrain, Feb. 28, 2026. (Reuters)
Iran’s retaliatory barrage targeted countries that host American forces, including Bahrain — home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet — as well as Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base and the UAE’s Al Dhafra Air Base. Authorities in those nations reported intercepting many of the incoming missiles. At least one civilian was killed in the UAE by falling debris, according to local authorities.
Iranian officials characterized their response as proportionate and warned of additional action if strikes continue. A senior U.S. official described the Iranian retaliation as “ineffective,” though independent assessments of the overall impact are still developing.
Smoke rises over the city after the Israeli army launched a second wave of airstrikes on Iran in Tehran on Feb. 28, 2026. (Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images)
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Regional governments condemned the strikes on their territory as violations of sovereignty, raising the risk that additional countries could become directly involved if escalation continues.
The situation remains fluid, with military and diplomatic channels active across the region. Pentagon officials are expected to provide further updates as damage assessments and casualty reviews are completed.
Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin contributed to this report.
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Iran fires missiles at US bases across Middle East after American strikes on nuclear, IRGC sites
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