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Trump Participates in a Pull Aside with the Secretary General of NATO, Jan. 21, 2026

January 21, 2026 · The White House · 0:04:58

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump held a media pull-aside with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21, 2026. “We lifted GDP from 2% to 5% together. That was done jointly,” the President said of the alliance’s defense-spending increase, adding: “We’ll be talking about various things. We’ll be talking about Greenland. I imagine it may come up in our discussion.” He also noted the following day’s Board of Peace event was drawing “tremendous acceptance.”

Rutte thanked the President for what he had done since taking office the previous January, saying Trump had gotten “the Europeans and Canada to really step up,” which “led to the enormous success we had in The Hague — the 5%, which is crucial to defend ourselves and to also equalize with what the US is paying.”

Why it matters

The pull-aside is the on-record marker of the Davos day’s alliance track: the 5-percent spending settlement both men claim as a joint achievement, and Greenland named openly as the live item between them — the meeting that preceded the Greenland framework discussions of the same Davos trip.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the 5-percent-of-GDP defense-spending commitment is restated here by both the President and the Secretary General as achieved fact. Noted for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Participates in a Pull Aside with the Secretary General of NATO,” Davos, Switzerland, January 21, 2026 (official upload, embedded above). All characterizations as stated by the two leaders at the event.