Only Trump superfans come for 'Board of Peace' signing

Most influential leaders from the biggest economies either left town or cancelled plans to attend the WEF

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US President Donald Trump flanked by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (left) and Indonesia's President Prabowo Subianto in Davos on Thursday.

(REUTERS)

A voice offstage boomed “Please welcome the chairman of the Board of Peace!” and Donald Trump entered the same hall in Davos where he addressed the world’s elite just a day earlier. But it was a rather different collection of characters who showed up.

Among those summoned were the iconoclastic Javier Milei, the ever-smiling Trump superfan, and a clutch of leaders that in this might-is-right world order can be more comfortably called strongmen. There was Prabowo Subianto, a former military general, and Viktor Orban, who over decades has turned Hungary into an illiberal state and béte noire inside the European Union.

The clapping from the audience wastepid at best. The mood subdued.

Safe to say, Trump felt right at home as he stared down at the attendces, just shy of 20. Among the faces peering up, waiting to be called two by two to sign the charter, were a smattering of diplomatic representatives from Middle East kingdoms and former Soviet satellites, perhaps most gallingly Belarus, whose long-serving president is popularly known as “Europe's last dictator.”