Argentina’s President Javier Milei used commercial flights to reach the elite World Economic Forum (WEF) summit in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, spending half an hour shaking hands and taking selfies with passengers in economy class.
Milei — and a small entourage including his sister and General Secretary of the Presidency Karina Milei, Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, Cabinet Chief Nicolás Posse, and Economy Minister Luis Caputo — reportedly flew out of Argentina and made a brief stop in Frankfurt, Germany, before flying into Zurich and driving to Davos.
Photos and videos of Milei peeking out of business class to greet fellow travelers began circulating online on Tuesday afternoon. The Argentine news outlet Infobae reported that Milei spent about half an hour greeting and taking photos with passengers and stopped only when told he needed to sit to prepare for landing. Milei also appeared in videos taking photos with airport staffers on the ground.
Javier Milei saludó y se sacó fotos junto a los pasajeros en el vuelo hacia Davos https://t.co/VtTKC0rpSU pic.twitter.com/rODQ7xCIGq
— infobae (@infobae) January 16, 2024
🚨 IMPERDIBLE┃Asi fue el caluroso recibimiento a Javier Milei en su llegada a Suiza
El presidente más querido de la historia. 🇷 pic.twitter.com/MTK5Y5Hhnk
— El Bunker de Milei (@BunkerMilei) January 16, 2024
The president’s decision to fly in commercial business class, rather than take a private jet, saved the Argentine taxpayer upwards of $320,000, according to the Pink House, the office of the president of the nation.
🇷 | Desde el Gobierno confirman que al viajar a Davos en avión comercial, el Presidente Javier Milei (@JMilei) y su comitiva se ahorran US$ 321.330 dólares, en comparación a si hubieran hecho el viaje en avión privado. pic.twitter.com/HCPC14lqXv
— La Derecha Diario (@laderechadiario) January 16, 2024
The incident is not the first in Milei’s nascent term, which began on December 10. Milei took the time to greet passengers on a domestic flight in December, receiving loud applause and shouting his campaign slogan, “¡viva la libertad, carajo!” (roughly, “long live liberty, damn it!”)
Milei was reportedly traveling to attend a theater performance by his girlfriend Fátima Flórez and paid for his flight out of pocket.
Commercial flying is not a popular choice for attending the Davos summit. Over 1,000 private jets descend onto Switzerland annually, carrying dozens of heads of state, billionaire businessmen, and other “stakeholders” to the WEF meeting. This year’s event, titled “Rebuilding Trust,” is expected to attract over 2,500 people and cost $40,000 a ticket. Attendance is by invitation only.
The number of private jets expected to Davos regularly is in the hundreds and sometimes hovers between 1,000 and 2,000. According to the environmentalist group Greenpeace, which sponsored a study by the Dutch consultancy CE Delft in 2023, the 2022 World Economic Forum meeting attracted 1,040 private jets, over half of which flew less than 466 miles. In 2015, that number was 1,700 jets.
The administration of leftist President Joe Biden sent an American delegation to the White House led by “special presidential envoy for climate” John Kerry — an avid flier who reportedly sold his family’s private jet in February after years of criticism over his prodigious carbon footprint — to Davos this year. Kerry is expected to be joined by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, among others.
Kerry has previously defended the use of private jets by claiming that wealthy elites who fly using the highly polluting method “buy offsets,” referring to the process by which the wealthy invest money in allegedly “green” initiatives to compensate for their personal damage to the earth.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry boards his plane at Cairo International Airport on September 13, 2014, as he leaves the Egyptian capital. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images, file)
Unlike the members of the Biden delegation to the World Economic Forum, Milei is an economist by profession. The Argentine president is expected to leverage his presence at the event to seek foreign investment in his country’s ailing economy and to promote his libertarian, anti-socialist political stances. Milei was elected president in November amid the most severe economic crisis in the history of Argentina. At the time, the nation’s inflation rate hovered around 143 percent; by the end of the year, Argentina’s annual inflation rate for 2023 reached upwards of 210 percent.
Milei is the nation’s first libertarian president and ran a third-party campaign against both the establishment conservatives and the ruling Peronist socialist coalition, which had governed the nation for two decades. In remarks to an Infobae reporter on the flight to Europe, Milei said he was attending Davos to combat socialist ideology. Asked what the goal of his visit was, Milei responded, “to plant the ideas of liberty in a forum contaminated by the socialist Agenda 2030 which is only going to bring misery to the world.”
“El objetivo del viaje es plantar las ideas de la Libertad en un foro que está contaminado con la agenda socialista 2030 que solo traerá miseria al mundo”.
El Presidente Javier Milei aterrizó en Zúrich junto a la comitiva compuesta por la Secretaria General de la Presidencia,… pic.twitter.com/8EoWvvzIZJ
— Oficina del Presidente (@OPRArgentina) January 16, 2024
Agenda 2030 is a United Nations “sustainable development” plan to universalize countries’ approach to climate change, combatting disinformation, and other issues the U.N. deems to be threats to the world.
Milei is expected to address Davos on Wednesday with a presentation titled, “Liberty, the Key to Prosperity.” Davos attendees will also receive addresses on Wednesday by Blinken, U.N. chief Antonio Guterres, and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
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