“NOT SO POPULAR”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the war in Gaza, had said he would join but was not at the ceremony.
The representatives of the 19 countries on stage with Trump included two close populist allies, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Argentina’s Javier Milei, and officials from a host of Middle Eastern monarchies that want to curry favour.
Trump joked that they were “in most cases very popular leaders, some cases not so popular”.
“That’s the way it goes in life,” he said.
Trump said he expected around 50 countries to join but the full extent of its membership remains unclear.
Egypt said President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had accepted Trump’s invitation to join but he was not on stage.
Trump, meanwhile, said Putin had agreed to join, though the Russian leader said he was still studying the invite.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met Trump at Davos on Thursday, has also been invited but has said that he could not envisage working alongside arch-foe Putin.
Trump said on Thursday he was hopeful of a deal soon to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – which he admits he thought would be the easiest conflict to resolve but has proved the hardest.
Zelenskyy has meanwhile voiced fears that Trump’s push to seize Greenland – which has dominated Davos so far and threatened to unravel the transatlantic alliance – could divert focus away from Russia’s invasion of his country.
Trump, however, said late on Wednesday he had reached a “framework of a future deal” and would waive tariffs on European allies.
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