Trump’s assault on Europe: "Happy new year? Somehow I don’t think so..."

A year ago, we were on the countdown to Donald Trump’s return to the White House. While I spent most of the editorial in the Hot Press Annual excoriating Joe Biden for his complicity in the genocide in Gaza and in the mass murder of what was then 45,000 people, 70% of them women and children, I knew things were about to get worse.

“He will betray Ukraine,” I said of the incoming President, Donald Trump. “Give Israel the go ahead to steal more land, to turn Gaza into a theme park. He will attack his rivals at home. Stifle independent media. Pack the courts. Do everything he can to establish an authoritarian dynasty. And give two fingers to any attempt to address the climate crisis.”

I am not claiming any great foresight here. It was as obvious then as it is now that the man is an unmitigated scoundrel, interested only in who he can gouge, no matter who loses an eyeball.

Let’s be honest: to anyone with a semblance of objectivity, Trump’s blatant corruption, his desire to enrich himself and his cronies at every turn, and his complete lack of any moral compass do not come as a surprise. He is a crook. Always was. And he is unlikely to change at the age of 79.

But what is utterly bizarre is the extent to which so many American people seem to be completely blind to the mind-boggling extent of the grift, abuse of power, kleptomania, fraud, dictatorial bullying and general nastiness of which Trump has been guilty since returning to the Oval Office in January 2025.

Over the past few days, I have been reading about the immigrants from Somalia who voted for Donald Trump in the 2024 Presidential election. Now, he is calling them – Somalis that is – garbage. “We don’t want them in our country,” Trump said, in what has been described as a dehumanising tirade.

“The Somalians should be out of here,” he added the following day. “They’ve destroyed our country.”

Our country. It’d make me laugh if my first instinct wasn’t to feel like crying. How could these people have been so fucking stupid? Can they really have been blind to the racism and prejudice that have been hallmarks of Trump’s version of reality for a long time?

81% of Somalis voted for Kamala Harris, which of course is Trump’s real problem. But he has one thing in common with the Somalis who voted for him: hostility to the LGBTQ community and to the idea of gay rights. It is not, of course, that Trump has any feelings or convictions, one way or the other, about people who are LGBTQ.

It is that far right and evangelical Christian money poured into his campaign – and subsequently his personal coffers – and therefore he is happy to adopt the anti-LGBTQ policies that are matters of so-called religious conviction for these horrible bigots.

And this is all that matters. Looting everywhere he can. Hoovering up every loose dollar.

Or better still every ruble.

THUGGISH CRONIES

Donald Trump is, as we have seen again recently, hell-bent on cutting Ukraine adrift. He hates President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because he refused to give him dirt on Hunter Biden. And he greatly admires the poisonous Putin because – well, he has been in power for so long, an achievement Trump would like to emulate. Besides, it makes sense for him to normalise the way a dictator operates, given that this is where his Presidency is heading.

Power is being centralised. Independent media are under daily, ongoing threat. Branches of the State apparatus are being blatantly politicised. Long-standing public servants are being sacked and supporters of the current regime installed as replacements.

Opponents of the regime are being attacked and vilified – and where possible hauled before the courts on trumped-up, bogus charges. Even the judiciary is being suborned, with the Supreme Court consistently giving the President exactly what he wants.

Cities that vote Democrat are coming under attack. Agents working for ICE – United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement – have been given almost unlimited freedom to haul people away and lock them up. As I write, close to 75,000 people with no criminal records have been arrested. Tens of thousands more are living in fear. At every turn, democratic norms are being undermined. Gerrymandering is back.

A concerted effort is being made by Trump and his thuggish cronies to stack the deck so completely that it will be impossible for the Democrats to regain either Congress or the Senate, whether in the 2026 mid-term elections or the next Presidential election in 2028.

Meanwhile he and his ‘Defence Secretary’ Pete Hegseth are busy murdering Venezuelans on the open seas, in complete contravention of human rights and the rules of engagement. They are threatening to use force against countries historically seen as their allies. And generally behaving as if they can do what they like, when they like and give the finger to anyone who disagrees.

Pete Hegseth

So why is everyone tiptoeing around being nice to and palsy with these monsters?

PATRIOTIC EUROPEAN PARTIES

That question came into focus again last week, when the US published its latest, updated National Security Strategy, a 33-page document that sets out the current geopolitical concerns of the United States of America.

Now, you might have imagined that the threat represented by Vladimir Putin would be the main topic under consideration. Wrong.

Ah, then the focus must be on Beijing, on China’s increasingly effective foreign policies, on their desire to invade Taiwan and the menace this represents to US interests. Wrong again.

The climate crisis, perhaps?

No. Instead, the Trump administration focuses on Europe, bellowing that it faces “civilisational erasure.” And the document also questions whether certain (European) nations can remain “reliable allies.”

Stop smirking at the back! Of course you’re correct: this is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. Right now, there is no more unreliable ‘ally’ than the United States of America under Donald Trump. The fact that he is desperate to throw Ukraine to the wolves, so that he can cut a criminal deal with Russia is just one example.

But this is the new modus operandi of the far right and of conservatives everywhere. Get your retaliation in first. Steal the language of the proponents of human rights. Use the word freedom when what you really want is power and control, the biggest voice to be able to shout the loudest and drown everyone else out. Accuse the opposition of being guilty of the crimes you are in the process of committing.

Dress murder up as patriotism. Fly the flag while you burn down people’s houses. Whinge about censorship of free speech, when what you really want is to be able to use tech platforms and social media companies to enforce US foreign policy objectives across the world without restraint.

Donald Trump referred to the document as a roadmap to ensure that the US remains “the greatest and most successful nation in human history.” Yeah, right. Tell that to the Vietnamese. But the question follows: why should anyone, in Europe or elsewhere in the world, go along with that kind of mad imperialist zealotry?

Of course, it’s MAGA language for MAGA people, designed to make the gullible in America feel that they’re great. But what is not funny at all is that the US, under Donald Trump, openly declares in the document that it intends to interfere in elections in Europe. The National Security Strategy (which has nothing to do with security, and a lot to do with domination) goes on to enthuse about so-called “patriotic European parties.” And there’s more. “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit,” it proclaims.

Which, of course, is why the administration supported the fascist Afd party in recent German elections.

COMMITMENT TO UKRAINE

If you’re imagining a happy new year, there’s a few things here to you need to chew on here.

The first is that the big US-owned tech companies will be used to further pursue this decision to meddle in elections in Europe, the UK and Ireland and achieve regime change if possible, in favour of far right, authoritarian parties. That’s why the failure on the part of the EU to challenge, regulate and control the impact of US tech companies to date has been such a spectacular own goal. That has to change – and fast.

The second is that this is exactly where the interests of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin align. Donald Trump wants to destroy the European Union. So too does Vladimir Putin. They are both determined to prevent Europe from fully realising the huge potential it has economically and politically. They are determined to split the world into spheres of influence where the three self-styled super-powers – the United States, Russia and China – can dictate the terms to other countries within their separate regions.

Currently, Europe stands in the way of Russian expansionism. It also has the potential to act as a bulwark against the increasingly aggressive form of nakedly exploitative, US capitalist imperialism being pursued by Trump, Hegseth, Steve Witkoff and the rest.

But that potential will only be realised if Europe begins to act with the collective sense of urgency that the current shift towards authoritarianism, and away from the old post-Second World War alliances – which is being engineered by the right-wing Christian evangelists in America and put into effect by Donald Trump’s thugs, both at home and abroad – requires.

That may demand a far stronger commitment to Ukraine than has been evident in Europe to date. Certainly, the EU – along with Canada, Australia, Norway and whatever other countries can be drawn into an alliance – will have to fiercely resist the appalling betrayal of Ukraine represented by the 28-point deal written, as we now understand, by Russia – and trumpeted as Trump’s plan for peace.

Happy new year? Somehow I don’t think so, all the more so if you live in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan or on the border between Thailand and Cambodia – but we have no option except to get on with it…

See you on the other side.