Tag Archives: Western Europe

Newsweek: Why do MAGA Republicans hate Europe?

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In May 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan spoke from the Oval Office in an address not targeted at the American people, but the citizens of Western Europe. The president was planning a trip to meet with Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and wanted to make his commitment to Europe clear.

Staring directly at the camera, Reagan said: “Shared [moral] standards and beliefs tie us to Europe today. They are the essence of the community of free nations to which we belong.”

Thirty years later, in July 2018, while sitting for an interview with CBS at his Turnberry golf resort in Scotland, Republican President Donald Trump was asked to name America’s top global foe. “Well, I think we have a lot of foes,” Trump said. “I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade. Now you wouldn’t think of the European Union, but they’re a foe.”

Why do MAGA Republicans hate Europe?
The Trump administration’s stance on Europe has grabbed headlines, but the Republican Party’s icy posture toward internationalism goes back decades.

https://www.newsweek.com/maga-republicans-donald-trump-jd-vance-europe-2071814

Vacationing elsewhere, not in Trump’s Amerika

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Europeans:

Some Europeans reconsider trips to US in protest against Trump
Danish traveller Kennet Brask loved his fishing trip to Florida two years ago and was planning to return this year. “When I saw this meeting, I told myself, ‘I’m never going to go to the United States as long as Mr. Trump is the President there,’” Brask told Reuters, adding that Trump was “so rude” and didn’t behave like a grown-up. Brask is one of a number of Danes, Germans and more broadly Europeans who are reconsidering travel plans as a result of Trump’s actions, according to five travel agents across the continent.

Some Europeans reconsider trips to US in protest against Trump

And Canadians:

Canadians Are Boycotting American Vacations – WSJ

The Telegraph: Only Europe can stop the slide back to the rule of Trumpian tyrants

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Good article except that the journalist appears not to understand the meaning of “sycophant”. Trump is a narcissist, not a sycophant. The sycophants are the suck-ups surrounding him and providing him with the adulation that he craves.

This North Korean level of idolatry for the magnificence of the presidential persona is not normal. It is, indeed, out of character with the spirit of the nation’s historical conception of itself as an egalitarian democracy in which anyone – the child of any family – may rise to the highest office in the land while still remaining, at heart, an ordinary American. Being elected president does not make you a god – or even the bearer of a sacred truth. 

According to the Constitution, it does not even give you the power to do what you like. You are simply the head of the Executive branch of the federal government whose intentions may (indeed, should) be held in check by Congress and the courts. 

I reiterate this point, which I realise that I have made before on these pages, because I still find myself endlessly shocked by the flouting of the basic assumptions of American nationhood which were once ingrained in the consciousness of every schoolchild …

Only Europe can stop the slide back to the rule of Trumpian tyrants
As America swoons before a sycophant, the rest of the West must defend its hard-won values from autocratic incursion

Only Europe can stop the slide back to the rule of Trumpian tyrants