Sarcastic remarks Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni made earlier this month in response to calls for Italy to distance itself from the U.S. resurfaced after President Donald Trump claimed during a speech at the World Economic Forum that the U.S. has "never gotten anything" from NATO.
Trump stoked tensions at the gathering of world and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, by continuing his push to seize control of Greenland from Denmark. He reiterated his reasoning that owning Greenland is crucial to domestic and international security, dismissing the fact the territory is under the control of a key ally.
In addition to repeatedly calling Greenland “a piece of ice"—ignoring the more than 56,000 people who live there—he stressed that Greenland is the "land on which we're going to build the greatest Golden Dome" ever built, referring to a concept that draws partial inspiration from Israel’s Iron Dome, which has been intercepting rockets and missiles since 2011.
And above all, he insisted that until he "came along," NATO was draining U.S. coffers, constituting yet another attack against the alliance.
He said:
“So what we have gotten out of NATO is nothing, except to protect Europe from the Soviet Union and now Russia. I mean, we’ve helped them for so many years. We’ve never gotten anything except we pay for NATO and we paid for many years until I came along."
"We paid, in my opinion, 100 percent of NATO because they weren't paying their bills and all we're asking for is to get Greenland including right title and ownership because you need the ownership to defend it. You can't defend it on a lease. Legally, it's not defensible that way, totally."
"And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease which is a large piece of ice in the middle of the ocean where, if there is a war, much of the action will take place on that piece of ice. Think of it: those missles would be flying right over the center of that piece of ice."
"All we want from Denmark, for national and international security and to keep our very energetic and potential dangerous enemies at bay, is this land on which we're going to build the greatest Golden Dome ever built."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
Soon after Trump's speech made the rounds on social media, a video of Meloni's sarcastic response to calls for Italy to distance itself from the U.S. due to Trump's Greenland aggression began to circulate.
At first, some social media users interpreted Meloni’s comments as a direct rebuke of Trump’s remarks about NATO. But her argument instead underscored why Italy cannot simply walk away from the alliance, laying out how fraught such a move would be for trade and for the U.S.-Italy relationship—not to mention Italy’s ties with the rest of Europe—if it were to abandon NATO.
Speaking during her New Year's media briefing earlier this month, Meloni—a reliable Trump ally—clarified that she disagrees with Trump's push to control Greenland but doesn't agree with calls for Italy to cut off the U.S.:
“What do you mean we must distance ourselves, in the sense that we must leave NATO? We must close American bases? We must sever trade relations, we must storm McDonald’s?”
"I don't know, what should we do? Of course, I don't always agree with everything my allies say. The interests of nations don't always perfectly overlap."
You can hear what she said in the video below.
It's worth pointing out that Trump's claim about NATO spending isn't true—and he once again presented an inaccurate picture of the alliance's relationship with the U.S.
The alliance's 2% spending target refers to members’ own domestic defense spending and does not constitute actual “bills” or money owed to the United States, despite Trump’s repeated claims to the contrary.
In fact, all NATO members were funding their own militaries when Trump was not in office. Defense spending by non-U.S. allies totaled $292 billion in 2016 and rose to an estimated $482 billion in 2024. While many countries were slow to reach the alliance’s 2% benchmark, a majority were meeting it by 2024, with 18 of the 31 members subject to the target spending at or above that level.
NATO data show that U.S. defense spending accounted for about 63% of the alliance’s total in 2024, down from roughly 72% in 2016, the year before Trump first took office. While those shares are substantial, they fall well short of the 100% figure Trump has repeatedly claimed.
The U.S. also covers a smaller portion of NATO’s own operating budget. Under the alliance’s cost-sharing formula, the U.S. contributed about 16% of that budget when Trump returned to office in 2025, compared with roughly 22% when he first assumed the presidency in 2017.
And perhaps most importantly, it was NATO that rallied to the U.S. after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, invoking Article 5—the alliance's collective defense clause—for the only time in its history.
Member states went on to form a coalition that fought alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan for years, often at significant cost. Denmark alone—the same country Trump threatens each day over Greenland—lost more than 40 soldiers, one of the highest per-capita casualty rates among NATO allies.
Many have criticized his remarks.
Trump later announced the "framework of a future deal" for Greenland, following a "very productive meeting" with Secretary General of NATO Mark Rutte.
It is still uncertain what role the Trump administration will have in the island territory. However, Trump told Fox Business that the U.S. has received permanent and "total access." He said "there’s no end, there’s no time limit" to U.S. involvement in Greenland.
Meanwhile, Rutte told Reuters that the agreement would require NATO members to shore up their security in the Arctic to ward off Russian and Chinese aggression.
Denmark has yet to comment on Trump's remarks.
@realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
