WASHINGTON — President Trump described Europe as “decaying” and run by “weak” leaders in a harsh takedown of a lot of America’s high allies in a newly printed interview.
“I believe they’re weak,” Trump instructed Politico’s Dasha Burns Monday on the newest episode of “The Dialog” podcast. “However I additionally assume that they need to be so politically right.”
“I believe they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.”
Trump’s feedback got here days after his administration’s newest Nationwide Safety Technique warned that Europe was heading towards “civilizational erasure” resulting from “actions of the European Union and different transnational our bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration insurance policies which might be reworking the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and lack of nationwide identities and self-confidence.”
That declaration despatched shivers down the spines of many European leaders, a few of whom, similar to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, tried to impress upon the American public that “Europe is your closest ally, not your downside.”
Host Dasha Burns pressed Trump for his response to European leaders who “are a bit of freaked out” by the administration’s rhetoric.
“They need to be freaked out by what they’re doing to their international locations. They’re destroying their international locations,” the president shot again, including that “they’re folks I like.”
“I get together with ’em. You, that. However they’ll’t let this occur, and it will get to some extent the place you may’t actually right it. There’ll be some extent, and it’s very near that time … that they’re now not going to be robust nations.”
Since Trump roared again into the White Home in January, many European leaders have sought to woo him with varied types of flattery and have acquiesced to him on commerce coverage to curry favor.
In August, following Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin, six European leaders and “Trump whisperer” NATO boss Mark Rutte trekked to Washington to assist Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky navigate his assembly with the American president.
The dramatic show was seemingly supposed to offer Zelensky with vital backup months after his explosive Feb. 28 Oval Workplace encounter with Trump.
On Monday, leaders from Germany, France, and the UK huddled with Zelensky in London to debate ongoing negotiations to finish the brutal conflict that has raged for practically 4 years, as Trump’s crew has ceaselessly produced proposals that the Europeans worry are too pleasant to the Kremlin.
Whereas Trump largely kept away from singling out particular European international locations for criticism, he made certain to laud Hungary and Poland for his or her tighter immigration insurance policies.
“I simply assume he’s doing an excellent job in a unique sense on immigration,” Trump mentioned of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán. “His nation’s landlocked.”
“One factor he’s actually gotten proper is the immigration as a result of he … he permits no one in his nation,” he continued. “However most European nations, they’re decaying.”
“They’re decaying.”
One chief Trump known as out by identify was London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan.
“He will get elected as a result of so many individuals have are available in. They vote for him now,” vented Trump, calling Khan a “catastrophe.”
“However I hate what’s occurred to London, and I hate what’s occurred to Paris. I hate once I see it.”
