Trump escalates verbal attacks against Europe: "They are weak and in decline"

BarcelonaIf on Friday the United States updated its national security strategy supporting the European far rightwhich It provoked a response On Monday, Donald Trump took another step forward in his criticism of the European Union, launching a verbal attack against European leaders. In an interview with PoliticalThe US president has asserted that Europe is a group of "declining" nations led by "weak" people who "want to be too politically correct." This is Trump's most direct and blatant disparagement of Europe to date. According to the leader of the US Republicans, the continent's governments failed to handle the war in Ukraine: "They're not managing it well," he declared, adding that if he weren't president, the conflict could have escalated into World War III. Trump also disapproves of the European immigration model: "Their immigration policy is a disaster," he stated, asserting that Angela Merkel, during her terms, made "two big mistakes: immigration and energy." In contrast, in the interview he describes the immigration policies of Poland and Hungary's President Viktor Orbán as "very good work." Orbán has repeatedly defied Brussels and has even been sanctioned by the CJEU for violating EU asylum law.

Trump's comments on the immigration model come just hours after the EU shifted its position on this issue this Monday towards the frameworks of the far right. endorsing the creation of immigrant deportation campswhere migrants could be locked up sine diewhich is what Spain wanted to avoid. However, Spain found itself practically alone in defending this position.

"They want to be too politically correct"

Still on the topic of immigration policy, Trump asserted that Europe is "very close" to reaching the point where there are no "strong nations," and said that the states of the Old Continent "should expel the people who entered the country illegally." "They want to be too politically correct, and that makes them weak," he said.

The US president also criticized the mayor of London, Labour's Sadiq Khan: "He's a disaster. He has a completely different ideology than the one he's supposed to have. And he gets elected because a lot of people turned out," he said about Khan, who has governed the city since 2020. "They have a completely different ideology" that will "change" the ideology of states, making them "weaker" and "very different."

He's embracing the pseudo-theory of the great replacement.

These claims align with the Great Replacement conspiracy theory espoused by far-right groups, which posits a deliberate effort to encourage migration from the Global South to replace the white population. The updated US national security strategy, released last week, incorporates some of the terms of this pseudo-theory. In the document, the Trump administration asserts that Europe faces the "disappearance of its civilization" and indicates that the US will support "patriotic" parties to prevent "certain NATO members from becoming predominantly non-European." This suggests pressure is being exerted on Europe to favor the growth of political parties that align with the anti-immigration policies that Trump is already implementing in the US.

Along the same lines, at an event at the White House this Monday, Trump expressed that, in his opinion, Europe is not on the right track: "Europe needs to be very careful. [...] It's on the wrong track, it's very bad for the people." The US president made this statement following the €120 million fine imposed by the EU on X, the platform of tech magnate Elon Musk, for lack of transparency and deceptive design. He called the decision "nasty." In fact, the new US national security strategy also speaks of "regulatory strangulation" in Europe.