It was a revealing moment in the Oval Office Monday when President Donald Trump was told that Europe would not be joining his coalition of the billing.
The message was delivered cordially but directly by French President Emmanuel Macron, who contradicted the U.S. president to his face.
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Trump, indulging his passion for fairy tales, said Europeans were just lending aid to Kyiv and would “get their money back.”
That’s when Macron cut him off, placing a hand gently on Trump’s forearm. “No,” said the French president, who had already deployed ample flattery for “dear Donald.” “In fact, to be frank, we paid 60 percent of the total effort, and it was through — like the U.S. — loans, guarantees, grants.”
Macron ignored Trump’s yeah-sure-pal smirk and pressed his point: Europe, whose total aid to Ukraine exceeds Washington’s, has “provided real money, to be clear.” And it would not be joining Trump in gouging Kyiv with demands for payback.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/07/trump-europe-contagion/
The language gap has never been wider between Europe and the United States. Europeans, reeling as Trump rips up an 80-year-old alliance like a used spa day pass, are clutching at bedrock values: democracy, fairness, territorial integrity and the right of states to freely choose their alliances.
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Trump regards all that as a sucker’s game.
Follow Lee Hockstader
Europeans were willfully deaf to copious warnings that Trump’s second term would bear little resemblance to his first, and that he would bulldoze establishment Republicans and traditional foreign-policy guardrails in favor of toadies and shock and awe. In Paris, Brussels and Berlin, officials assessed the approaching storm with weary shrugs, wishful thinking and platitudes. For two years, I heard the same message on auto-repeat: “We can deal with Trump — we’ve done it before.”
Now, dazed, they can barely comprehend what they hear from Washington: rhetoric with echoes of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda.
As for Trump’s demand that Kyiv sign over future proceeds from state-owned mineral rights as recompense for past U.S. aid — half a trillion dollars was his original demand — Europeans are appalled.
“It’s mafia stuff,” an ambassador told me.
That’s a lucid assessment of the tactics deployed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, national security adviser Michael Waltz and New York property mogul Steve Witkoff, who played the roles of bag man, goon and wise guy as they strong-armed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting Trump’s mineral rights shakedown.
The message was delivered cordially but directly by French President Emmanuel Macron, who contradicted the U.S. president to his face.
Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
Trump, indulging his passion for fairy tales, said Europeans were just lending aid to Kyiv and would “get their money back.”
That’s when Macron cut him off, placing a hand gently on Trump’s forearm. “No,” said the French president, who had already deployed ample flattery for “dear Donald.” “In fact, to be frank, we paid 60 percent of the total effort, and it was through — like the U.S. — loans, guarantees, grants.”
Macron ignored Trump’s yeah-sure-pal smirk and pressed his point: Europe, whose total aid to Ukraine exceeds Washington’s, has “provided real money, to be clear.” And it would not be joining Trump in gouging Kyiv with demands for payback.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/11/07/trump-europe-contagion/
The language gap has never been wider between Europe and the United States. Europeans, reeling as Trump rips up an 80-year-old alliance like a used spa day pass, are clutching at bedrock values: democracy, fairness, territorial integrity and the right of states to freely choose their alliances.
Advertisement
Trump regards all that as a sucker’s game.
Follow Lee Hockstader
Europeans were willfully deaf to copious warnings that Trump’s second term would bear little resemblance to his first, and that he would bulldoze establishment Republicans and traditional foreign-policy guardrails in favor of toadies and shock and awe. In Paris, Brussels and Berlin, officials assessed the approaching storm with weary shrugs, wishful thinking and platitudes. For two years, I heard the same message on auto-repeat: “We can deal with Trump — we’ve done it before.”
Now, dazed, they can barely comprehend what they hear from Washington: rhetoric with echoes of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda.
As for Trump’s demand that Kyiv sign over future proceeds from state-owned mineral rights as recompense for past U.S. aid — half a trillion dollars was his original demand — Europeans are appalled.
“It’s mafia stuff,” an ambassador told me.
That’s a lucid assessment of the tactics deployed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, national security adviser Michael Waltz and New York property mogul Steve Witkoff, who played the roles of bag man, goon and wise guy as they strong-armed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting Trump’s mineral rights shakedown.
