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According to a quote on NDTV from European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Trump said that "Belgium was a village somewhere in Europe".

Once Called Belgium A European Village, Donald Trump Asked To Brush Up Facts

"Mr. Trump, during his campaign, said that Belgium was a village somewhere in Europe," Juncker said in his frank remarks to students in Luxembourg on the reality TV star's stunning election victory.

Did Trump call Belgium a village?

Batman
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Andrew Grimm
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    Why the downvotes? Googling "Trump Belgium village" only got reports about Juncker's comments - I had to do some other googling to get to the bottom of the claim. – Andrew Grimm Nov 13 '16 at 04:16
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    Well, I'm sure there are some cities in the world named Belgium. Are they beautiful? I can't judge... :D – Luaan Nov 13 '16 at 19:18
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    Why the downvotes? Personally, I have enough of these US politics fights (slurs, accusation, lies) being brought to this forum. They serve no purpose, worse: it is adding fuel to the fire. They are totally unimportant, and are only brought up by people looking for arguments to beat each other on the head. Why bring these childish yes/no arguments here? –  Dec 05 '16 at 09:25
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    @JanDoggen slurs, accusations and lies is part of what Skeptics.SE is for. – Andrew Grimm Dec 05 '16 at 09:41

1 Answers1

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From the right-wing Daily Caller Trump: ‘Belgium Is A Beautiful City’ [VIDEO], we can see that he called Belgium a "beautiful city", and that it wasn't a verbal slip he immediately corrected.

So Belgium... is a beautiful city. And amazing place, magnificent buildings. I was there many many years ago. And [unaudible, he touches microphone] incredible image.

By contrast Belgium is a country:

Belgium ... officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a sovereign state in Western Europe bordered by France, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, and the North Sea. It is a small, densely populated country which covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi) and has a population of about 11 million people.

By size, Belgium is 136th of 195. By population, it is 77th. The metropolitan area of Brussels (the city that Daily Caller assumes Trump was referring to) has a population of 1.8 million.

As Junker doesn't seem to have been speaking in English, and translation isn't an exact process, I can't evaluate whether Junker mischaracterised Trump by talking about a village as opposed to a city.

Tomáš Zato
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Andrew Grimm
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    Several German newspapers reported on it and correctly used "Stadt" (city). Newspapers in French quoted Juncker: "La Belgique est un village pour Donald Trump". My guess is that Juncker changed it from "city" to "village", to express his indignation. Those news didn't say "Trump called Belgium a village", they quote Juncker. They probably knew that Juncker wasn't correct. – daraos Nov 13 '16 at 08:48
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    Literally none of the comments here were discussing making this answer better (which is what comments on answers are for!) - they were arguing over some petty definitions and other worthless definitions. I'm not even moving them to chat, they are that irrelevant. If you *wish* wo argue over petty definitions, do so in a chat room not here. – Jamiec Nov 14 '16 at 08:53
  • The video should be transcripted into the answer. – Tomáš Zato Dec 05 '16 at 01:54
  • Minor not: the *metropolitan area* of the [Brussels-Capital Region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels) has a population of 1.8 million. The [*city* of Brussels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Brussels) has a population of almost 180,000. –  Jan 20 '17 at 13:16