Today Politico — the designated outlet for the Deep State 51 — named President Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In anticipation of the recognition, Trump gave Politico’s Dasha Burns a 45-minute interview in the White House. Alexander Burns reports on the interview in “Trump thrashes European leaders in wide-ranging interview: ‘I think they’re weak.’” They’re weak on the international stage, but they are thugs at home. Trump observes: “They talk, but they don’t produce.”
Trump’s new National Security Strategy is one subject of the interview. We will have to take a look at it. Politico covered it here.
I have posted video of the interview below. Politico has also posted the transcript.
Quotable quote (from Burns’s story)(links omitted):
In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues.
In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.”
Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.”
The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government.
“Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.”
Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities.
Whole thing here.
