It seems that we now live in an America that is more likely to throw its support behind autocrats and fascists than to align with our long-term democratic allies.
European leaders should end the isolation of far-right parties across the Continent, US vice-president JD Vance has said.
The comments mark an extraordinary embrace of a once-fringe political movement with which the Trump administration shares a common approach on migration, identity and internet speech.
The address stunned and silenced hundreds of attendees at the Munich Security Conference, a forum where top-level politicians, diplomats and analysts had gathered expecting to hear US president Donald Trump’s plans for ending the war in Ukraine and Europe’s defence against a rising Russian threat.
Mr Vance singled out his German hosts, telling them to drop their objections to working with a party that has often revelled in banned Nazi slogans and has been shunned from government as a result.
Jim Takersley, Steven Erlanger, and David E. Sanger
European leaders left in stunned silence as JD Vance harangues them over approach to far right (The Irish Times)
Mr. Trump’s remarks late on Tuesday, when he sided fully with Russia’s narrative blaming Ukraine for the war, have now fortified the impression that the United States is prepared to abandon its role as a European ally and switch sides to embrace President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
It was a complete reversal of historic alliances that left many in Europe stunned and fearful.
Catherine Porter and Andrew Higgins
Meeting Again in Paris, European Leaders Try to Recalibrate After Trump Sides With Russia (The New York Times)
Make no mistake. The Trump-Vance-Musk regime is not only undermining democracy in the United States. It is also laying the foundation for undermining democracies around the world.
Since the end of World War II, liberal democracies have stuck together — led by America. On the opposite side have been authoritarian states, led mainly by the Soviet Union, followed, after the demise of the Soviet Union, by Russia and China.
But all this is rapidly changing. Both Russia and China have morphed into oligarchies, run by small groups of extraordinarily wealthy people.
America has also been moving from a democracy to an oligarchy — and is doing so at lightning speed under Trump, Vance, Musk, and their billionaire buddies.
The new poles of international power are coming to be global democracies versus a global oligarchy. The United States is emerging on the side of global oligarchy.
Robert Reich
The Trump-Vance-Musk-Putin plan (Robert Reich)
Scott Boehmer 