Donald Trump has far more in common with Vladimir Putin than with any European leader

It occurred to me to start by saying that there is only one thing that really matters to Donald Trump and that is money. Everything has a price. If you can pay then you are in – well, for as long as it suits him you are in. After that, as he likes to ask: “Who knows?”

Sometimes, of course, he just wants to establish that you have the money, so that he can demand it from you, with menace, in the classic style of the mafia don, as if you already owe it to him. Have the envelope ready every Friday, on the button. Otherwise, JD here will come calling. And JD doesn’t like to have to call on anyone, do you JD? They don’t call him JD Advance for nothing...

I could have riffed on that for a while.

But it isn’t true that nothing else matters.

Excuse me for interrupting, but are we finally about to acknowledge that President Trump is a man of principle, of honesty, integrity and empathy?

Thank you for that excellent summary.

Of course, what matters to Donald Trump even more than money is power. It is the ability to do anything and get away with it. And that, of course, includes the nasty pleasure the President takes, personally, in hurting, exploiting, ridiculing or damaging other people; in exacting revenge for perceived wrongs – or for just not doing what he wanted someone to do, to help him spin his web of lies and manipulations, at any given moment in time.

Someone like, say, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who in 2019 was told by the then President Trump that $250 million in stalled aid funds from the US might be unlocked if he could help to find dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Zelenskyy made a principled decision not to get involved. Sadly, with Trump back in power, it is one that the Ukrainian President might now find himself paying for in Ukrainian blood. Or land.

Because that’s the way Trump operates.

In Trump’s worldview, it us perfectly acceptable, now that he is back in office, to think: fuck Zelenskyy. Not a very nice man. He wouldn’t do me a favour when I needed it. I’m going to talk to my very good friend Vladimir Putin. He’s a very interesting guy. Successful politician. Been President for a long time like I wanna be. His invasion of Ukraine was genius, very savvy.

He’s a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride… and he loves his country, you know? He loves his country.

We’ll sort the whole thing out between us. We both love our countries.

Me and President Putin.

He’s a patriot then, is Donald. Is that not good enough for you?

Donald Trump wrote a book, The Art Of The Deal. You might imagine that he’d bring a bit of expertise to the challenge of hacking out a potential agreement to end hostilities in Ukraine.

Back in 2022, the invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s army was denounced by the US, under President Joe Biden. The United States led the response in imposing sanctions on Russia. Their policy seemed far too cautious at times, but they were considered a reliable ally, by Ukraine and by the other NATO countries that also opposed the invasion and contributed weapons and expertise to Ukraine.

Well, that’s all over now. Trump is closer to Russia than he is to his erstwhile NATO allies. And he dislikes Zelenskyy in inverse proportion to his admiration for Putin.

Anticipating this, the Ukrainian President, not unreasonably, thought: Trump has to feel that there is a pay-off involved here, to benefit him, and his cronies in America. So he mentioned some kind of Ukraine-US business partnership, in unlocking the value of the rare earth elements that currently lie beneath Ukrainian soil. In typically avaricious style, Trump immediately demanded 50% ownership of the rare earth minerals.

This would be a debt repayment – in return for the “millions of dollars in weapons and support the US had provided since Russia invaded in 2022.” In other words: we’re already entitled to these riches. His henchmen arrived for a meeting with Zelenskyy, with a contract ready to be signed on the spot.

Let’s just say that Zelenskyy has passed the contract over to his Ukrainian lawyers. Their expletives, we can take it, were emitted in private.

Notwithstanding the potential money to be squeezed out of Ukraine, in advance of any discussions on the subject with Zelenskyy or anyone else, Trump’s team had been helpfully putting it out there that returning to the pre-2014 borders of Ukraine was unrealistic; and that Ukraine would have to abandon plans to join NATO. Helpfully to Vladimir Putin, that is. At a stroke, the Trump team had enormously weakened the bargaining position of Ukraine.

Hey, with friends like these, who needs enemies?

Maybe he’s craftier than you or anyone else thinks. I say he’s playing possum!

As I write, European leaders are running around like headless chickens trying to understand what is going on with Trump and Putin. They are upset at the suggestion that they will be left out of negotiations with Russia, on which Trump’s team have already embarked in Riyad, without prior consultation with either Europe or Ukraine. They are even more upset at the speech made by Trump’s Vice Presidential appointment, JD Vance, at the Munich Security Conference.

It was less a speech than an anti-Europe invective, which accused European politicians of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs. “There is a new sheriff in town,” Vance said of Donald Trump. The implied threat was that he would sort out Europe if it didn’t sort itself out, by voluntarily taking on board his fascistic, right-wing agenda.

JD Vance

While visiting Germany, Vance also took in a meeting with the leader of the AfD – the neo-Nazi party, also championed by the white-supremacist, Trump-financing Elon Musk. They are making it quite clear where they stand.

How it might be best to approach Donald Trump is a fair question for anyone involved in politics to ask. But what makes no sense at all is being unprepared for just how arrogant and aggressive this new regime is...

In January 2016, at the beginning of his first Presidential campaign, Donald Trump boasted that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and he wouldn’t lose any votes. He saw this as a great thing. So proud of it! Isn’t that a beautiful thing! So beautiful. My fans and followers are so blind to any evil I might perpetrate that they carry on following me and voting for anyway! You hear that, Melania?

This is the power that he craves: the freedom to do the equivalent of shooting people and suffer no reprimand nor reputational damage.

The sick joke is that it is exactly what he has been given by the US Supreme Court which decided, in his favour, that any action taken as President of the United States would be covered by an immunity from prosecution (so, as President, he could indeed shoot someone and get away with it – you hear that, Melania?)

With a majority in both Congress and the Senate, and having won the popular vote by some distance, there really are no limits to what he can try to do, with only the courts – in his pocket above a certain level too – and the media to challenge him.

Everyone else on the global political stage has to get their heads around it, eventually, that this is what we are dealing with.

I get it. He is decisive. Is that a problem for you? And he’s entitled to his opinions on Europe...

To clarify: Donald Trump has far more in common with Vladimir Putin than with any European leader. In fact they agree on one thing in particular. They hate the EU.

Trump hates and wants to weaken it because it is a bigger market than the US. It has a larger population. In third place behind China (18.9%) and the US (15.5%), its current performance (15.2%) in terms of GDP – expressed in Purchasing Power Standards – may not be stellar, but if Europeans could get their act together, that reality could easily be reflected economically. The US would be down to No.3.

Putin hates the EU because it has extended into what had been the Russian sphere of influence, and even inside the old Soviet Union, with Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (the latter three all former Soviet republics), Slovenia and Slovakia all being granted membership alongside Russia’s immediate neighbours, Finland.

Vladimir Putin

Trump and Putin also have in common that they are imperialists by nature. As soon as he was elected in November 2024, Trump was talking about places he’d like to annex. So far, he has named Greenland, suggested making Canada the 51st state of the US and said that he will ‘take back’ the Panama Canal. And, in what has to be one of the most ignorant and insensitive ideas ever mooted by an American President, he has talked about turning Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East.

It was actually Jared Kushner’s idea, but no need to delve into that particular cesspit here. People around the world recoiled in horror. No one came out in support of what was by any standards a sickening endorsement of Israeli butchery. . Except, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has since said that he is “committed to” Trump’s plan to take over Gaza. “Everybody loves my plan,” Trump claimed.

European leaders rejected it, insisting that a two-state solution was the answer. Egypt stood firmly against the idea. So too did Jordan.

Trump was asked who would own this imagined new tourist resort? “I would,” he said. Other times he speculated that Israel would hand it over the the US. Maybe the real hope is that Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump will own it. Either way, Palestinians would have no right of return. It would be the clearest possible example of ethnic cleansing. It would be a war crime, brazenly committed by the President of the United States of America.

No responsibility. The Sheriff can do what he wants.

Now there’s lots wrong within the EU, and the collective failure to condemn Israel’s murderous aggression in Gaza is unforgivable. But Europe has little or nothing in common with this US regime of thugs. By all means, it makes diplomatic sense to see if there are fault-lines that can be uncovered, things that can be said and done to shift the ground away from the Trump idolatry that currently exists in America. And if there are ways to expose the current coup being enacted by Trump and Elon Musk, as they gut any and every aspect of the US public service, and change the rules completely without reference to Congress, all the better.

But understand: Trump’s core mission includes undermining and damaging European unity at every opportunity. Part of his planned new deal with Russia will be to join forces with them in doing precisely that.

Look, he’s a lovely man, who was saved by God from being assassinated so that he could Make America Great Again, right?

To add to the charge-sheet:

– He hates democracy. He showed that in his response to losing the 2020 election, falsely claiming that it had been stolen from him and attempting to bully those in charge of the count in key states to ‘find’ votes for him.

– He hates it so much that he encouraged an attempted coup, with his supporters invading Capitol Hill and battling to take over Government buildings on January 6, 2021. At least seven people lost their lives as a result. 147 police officers were among the injured. As President, Trump has now given pardons to all of those involved in the insurrection.

– He admires autocrats, including Putin, and seeks to emulate, in the US, the control they exert over every aspect of civic life, including crushing dissenting voices in the media and forcing the courts to do his bidding.

– He is determined to turn the United States of America into an autocratic state, in which the word of the President – the Leader, the Emperor, the King – is put into effect to the letter, no matter how stupid, irrational, whimsical or threatening.

– In case people were in any doubt about his ambitions to become an Emperor, in a social media post last weekend, he quoted Napoleon to justify his own failure to obey the law. “He who saves his country does not violate any laws,” he said. Napoleon is hardly the ideal choice as a role model. He created and then lost an empire. Ask Abba.

– He pretends to be a man of the people but actually despises people who are powerless more than anything else. That is clear from his language, wherein he depicts migrants as criminals and lunatics, people who are released from jails and mental hospitals and sent to America.

– He is, of course, racist. He will mouth ridiculous platitudes about the black people who voted for him, but his real attitude was revealed in his comments on the white supremacist rioters in Charlottesville, when he said that there were “very fine people” on both sides. Well, on one side anyway.

– He is a liar. This has been extensively documented over the ten years or so since he entered public life. But what it means is that, when it comes to discussing the big issues with him, not a single word can be taken at face value.

– He is a rapist, and therefore a very good examplar of the kind of neanderthal thinking about women that religion has always encouraged, including the three religions of Abraham: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

– And he is a bully, a quality which was well nut-shelled in his famous injunction about women, offered in the Access Hollywood tape, before he had launched his political career. “Grab ‘em by the pussy,” he urged. “You can do anything.”

So this is Donald ‘I Can Do Anything’ Trump. This is the man people call the Leader of the Free World. Pussy grab. Land grab. Money grab. Power grab. Whatever is floating out there, grab it and hold onto it. If no one can take it back, it’s yours. Like, say, Gaza.

Law of the jungle. It’s a beautiful thing. Everybody loves me. Great idea.

I say, Europe should – beatedly –make social media platforms fully responsible for everything they publish. Impose massive fines on regulatory failures. And make X a particular target –for breaking every law relating to hate speech, abusing GDPR rules, spreading disinformation, loading algorithms, artificially amplifying selected content, reducing moderation – and so on and on.

That’d at least bring back a bit of fun into European politics...