BRUSSELS — When it comes to support for Ukraine, a split has emerged between the European Union and its English-speaking allies. In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest democracies, new polling shows that more respondents want their governments to scale back financial aid to Kyiv than to increase it or keep it the same. In the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, respondents tilt the other way and favor maintaining material support, according to The POLITICO Poll, which surveyed more than 10,000 people across the five countries earlier this month. The findings land as European leaders prepare to meet in Brussels on Thursday for a high-stakes summit where providing financial support to Ukraine is expected to dominate the agenda. They also come as Washington seeks to mediate a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv — with German leader Friedrich Merz taking the lead among European nations on negotiating in Kyiv’s favor. Across all five countries, the most frequently cited reason for supporting continued aid to Ukraine was the belief that nations should not be allowed to seize territory by force. The most frequently cited argument against additional assistance was concerns about the cost and the pressure on the national economy.  “Much of our research has shown that the public in Europe feels the current era demands policy trade-offs, and financial support for Ukraine is no exception,” said Seb Wride, head of polling at Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London that carried out the survey for POLITICO.  “In a time where public finances are seen as finite resources, people’s interests are increasingly domestic,” he added.  WESTERN DIVIDE Germans were the most reluctant to ramp up financial assistance, with nearly half of respondents (45 percent) in favor of cutting financial aid to Kyiv while only 20 percent wanted to increase it. In France 37 percent wanted to give less and 24 percent preferred giving more. In contrast to the growing opposition to Ukrainian aid from Europe, support remains strikingly firm in North America. In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed skepticism toward Kyiv’s chances of defeating Moscow and has sent interlocutors to bargain with the Russians for peace. And yet the U.S. had the largest share of respondents (37 percent) in favor of increasing financial support, with Canada just behind at 35 percent. Support for Ukraine was driven primarily by those who backed Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election in the U.S. Some 29 percent of Harris voters said one of the top three reasons the U.S. should support Ukraine was to protect democracy, compared with 17 percent of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump. “The partisan split in the U.S. is now quite extreme,” Wride said. In Germany and France, opposition to assistance was especially pronounced among supporters of far-right parties — such as the Alternative for Germany and France’s National Rally — while centrists were less skeptical. “How Ukraine financing plays out in Germany in particular, as a number of European governments face populist challenges, should be a particular warning sign to other leaders,” Wride said. REFUGEE FATIGUE Support for military assistance tracked a similar divide. Nearly 40 percent of respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Canada backed higher levels of military aid, with about 20 percent opposed. In Germany 26 percent supported increased military aid to Ukraine while 39 percent opposed it. In France opinions were evenly split, with 31 percent favoring an increase and 30 percent favoring cuts. Germany was also the only country where a majority of respondents said their government should accept fewer Ukrainians displaced by the war.  In a country that has taken in more than a million Ukrainian refugees since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, 50 percent of Germans said Berlin should admit fewer.  Half of respondents also said Germany should reduce support for Ukrainians already settled in the country — a sign that public fatigue is extending beyond weapons and budgets to the broader social and political pressures of the conflict. The softer support for Ukraine in France and Germany does not appear to reflect warmer feelings toward Moscow, however. Voters in all five countries backed sanctions against Russia, suggesting that even where publics want to pare back aid they remain broadly aligned around punishing the aggressor and limiting Russia’s ability to finance the war. This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted from Dec. 5 to Dec. 9 and surveyed 10,510 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France and Germany. The results for each country were weighted to be representative in terms of age, gender and geography, and have an overall margin of sampling error of ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error. The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com.

Laura Thornton is the senior director for democracy programs at the McCain Institute. She spent more than two decades in Asia and the former Soviet Union with the National Democratic Institute. Earlier this month, I spoke at a conference in Bucharest for Eastern Europe’s democracy activists and leaders. I was discussing foreign malign influence operations, particularly around elections, highlighting Russia’s hybrid war in Moldova, when a Hungarian participant pointed out that U.S. President Donald Trump had offered Hungary’s illiberal strongman Viktor Orbán a one-year reprieve for complying with U.S. sanctions for using Russian oil and gas. With Hungarian elections around the corner and this respite being a direct relief to Orbán’s economy, “Is that not election interference?” she asked. The next day, while at the Moldova Security Forum in Chișinău, a Polish government official expressed his deep concern about sharing intelligence with the current U.S. administration. While he had great respect for the embassy in Warsaw, he noted a lack of trust in some leaders in Washington and his worry that intelligence would get leaked, in the worst case to Russia — as had happened during Trump’s first term. My week came to an end at a two-day workshop for democracy activists, all who described the catastrophic impact that the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) elimination had on their work, whether that be protecting free and fair elections, combating disinformation campaigns or supporting independent media. “It’s not just about the money. It’s the loss of the U.S. as a democratic partner,” said one Georgian participant. Others then described how this withdrawal had been an extraordinary gift to Russia, China and other autocratic regimes, becoming a main focus of their disinformation campaigns. According to one Moldovan participant, “The U.S. has abandoned Moldova” was now a common Russian narrative, while Chinese messaging in the global south was also capitalizing on the end of USAID to paint Washington as an unreliable ally. Having spent a good deal of my career tracking malign foreign actors who undermine democracy around the world and coming up with strategies to defend against them, this was a rude reality check. I had to ask myself: “Wait, are we the bad guys?” It would be naive to suggest that the U.S. has always been a good faith actor, defending global democracy throughout its history. After all, America has meddled in many countries’ internal struggles, supporting leaders who didn’t have their people’s well-being or freedom in mind. But while it has fallen short in the past, there was always broad bipartisan agreement over what the U.S. should be: a reliable ally; a country that supports those less fortunate, stands up against tyranny worldwide and is a beacon of freedom for human rights defenders. America’s values and interests were viewed as intertwined — particularly the belief that a world with more free and open democracies would benefit the U.S. As the late Senator John McCain famously said: “Our interests are our values, and our values are our interests.” At the Moldova Security Forum in Chișinău, a Polish government official expressed his deep concern about sharing intelligence with the current U.S. administration. | Artur Widak/Getty Images I have proudly seen this born out in my work. I’ve lived in several countries that have had little to offer the U.S. with regards to trade, extractive industries or influence, and yet we supported their health, education and agriculture programs. We also stood up for defenders of democracy and freedom fighters around the world, with little material benefit to ourselves. I’ve worked with hundreds of foreign aid and NGO workers in my life, and I can say not one of them was in it for a “good trade deal” or to colonize resources. But today’s U.S. foreign policy has broken from this approach. It has abandoned the post-World War II consensus on allies and the value of defending freedom, instead revolving around transactions and deal-making, wielding tariffs to punish or reward, and defining allies based on financial benefit rather than shared democratic values. There are new ideological connections taking place as well — they’re just not the democratic alliances of the past. At the Munich Security Forum earlier this year, U.S. Vice President JD Vance chose to meet with the far-right Alternative for Germany party rather than then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Conservative Political Action Committee has also served as a transatlantic bridge to connect far-right movements in Europe to those in the U.S., providing a platform to strongmen like Orbán. The recently released U.S. National Security Strategy explicitly embraces this pivot away from values toward more transactional alliances, as well as a fondness for “patriotic European parties” and a call to “resist” the region’s “current trajectory” — a clear reference to the illiberal, far-right movements in Europe. Meanwhile, according to Harvard University’s school of public health, USAID’s closure has tragically caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, while simultaneously kneecapping the work of those fighting for freedom, human rights and democracy. And according to Moldovan organizations I’ve spoken with, while the EU and others continue to assist them in their fight against Russia’s hybrid attacks ahead of this year’s September elections, the American withdrawal is de facto helping the Kremlin’s efforts. It should have come as no surprise to me that our partners are worried and wondering whose side the U.S. is really on. But I also believe that while a country’s foreign policy often reflects the priorities and values of that nation as a whole, Americans can still find a way to shift this perception. Alliances aren’t only built nation-to-nation — they can take place at the subnational level, creating bonds between democratic cities or states in the U.S. with like-minded local governments elsewhere. Just like Budapest doesn’t reflect its anti-democratic national leadership, we can find connections and share lessons learned. Moreover, partnerships can be forged at the civil society level too. Many American democracy and civic organizations, journalists and foundations firmly believe in a pro-democracy U.S. foreign policy, and they want to build communities with democratic actors globally. At a meeting in Prague last month, a former German government official banged their hand on the table, emphatically stating: “The transatlantic relationship is dead!” And I get it. I understand that the democratic world may well be tempted to cut the U.S. off as an ally and partner. But to them I’d like to say that it’s not our democracy organizations, funding organizations and broader government that abandoned them when national leadership changed. Relationships can take on many shapes, layers and connections, and on both sides of the Atlantic, those in support of democracy must now find new creative avenues of cooperation and support. I hope our friends don’t give up on us so easily.

LONDON — When a job for life beckons, principles have a way of disappearing. Keir Starmer has given 25 close allies an early Christmas present, appointing them to Britain’s unelected House of Lords. They’ll don some ermine, bag a grand title, claim £371 a day just for showing up and swan around the Palace of Westminster for the rest of their lives — or at least until their 80th birthday. The PM’s former Director of Communications Matthew Doyle, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ ex-Chief of Staff Katie Martin and Iceland Foods Founder Richard Walker are among the lucky Labour-supporting individuals given a spot in Britain’s unelected legislating chamber — all without having to make their case to British voters. The opposition Tories and Lib Dems (no strangers to filling the upper chamber when they were in power) got a paltry three and five spots respectively, while the insurgent Reform UK and Greens missed out completely. Pushing back at the criticism, which comes as Labour vows a host of changes to the upper chamber, a party official said: “⁠The Tories stuffed the House of Lords, creating a serious imbalance that has allowed them to frustrate our plans to make working families better off. “This needs to be corrected to deliver on our mandate from the British people. We will continue to progress our program of reform, which includes removing the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the Lords.” POLITICO runs through five times the party laid into the red benches. 2020: BRING THE HOUSE DOWN Starmer was unapologetically radical during the Labour leadership contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn. He made 10 striking pledges as he courted the party’s left-wing membership. One included a promise to “devolve power, wealth and opportunity” by introducing a federal system which would “abolish the House of Lords and replace it with an elected chamber.” 2022: KEIR THE FIXER The Labour leader still backed Lords abolition for a chunk of his time in opposition — though he knew existing Labour peers might have a view or two about that. Starmer charmed his unelected legislators in November 2022 by praising the “vital role” they played, but insisted he was focused on “restoring trust in politics” after ex-PM Boris Johnson rewarded “lackeys and donors” with peerages. Sound familiar?  “We need to show how we will do things differently. Reforming our second chamber has to be a part of that,” the Labour leader said. 2022: STRONG CONSTITUTION The following month, Labour’s plans got a hard launch. In a dazzling (well, for Starmer) press conference, he promised the “biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster to the British people.” Strong stuff. Starmer got party bigwig and ex-PM Gordon Brown to pen a report backing constitutional change — including the abolition of the House of Lords. Starmer said an unelected chamber was “indefensible” and an elected house would be created “with a strong mission.” A timeframe was not forthcoming. 2023: SLOW AND STEADY Angela Smith has led Labour in the Lords since 2015, but still recognizes reform is needed. The shadow Lords leader insisted Labour wouldn’t flood the chamber with its own people if in power. Angela Smith has led Labour in the Lords since 2015, but still recognizes reform is needed. | Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing via Getty Images  “No. Ain’t gonna happen,” she told the House magazine just months before the general election. “The idea that Keir Starmer is on day one going to have a list of 100 people to put here is cloud cuckoo.”  She said it wasn’t all about winning votes: “I don’t want this to be a numbers game, like ‘yah boo, we’ve got more than you, we’re gonna win, we’re gonna smash this through’. That’s not what the House of Lords does.” She may feel differently now the government suffers defeats on its legislation under her watch. 2024: WRITTEN IN SAND Labour’s election-winning manifesto retreated from the halcyon rebel days of opposition, but it was still punchy. “Reform is long overdue and essential,” it argued, claiming “too many peers do not play a proper role in our democracy.” The manifesto also promised a minimum participation requirement, mandatory retirement age and strengthened processes for removing disgraced members. “We will reform the appointments process to ensure the quality of new appointments and will seek to improve the national and regional balance of the second chamber,” it said. No. 10 insisted Thursday it will progress with House of Lords reform — though … declined to give a timeline.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov resigned Thursday following weeks of huge protests against the government across multiple cities. The announcement came shortly before the Cabinet faced another vote of confidence, the sixth since it took power in January of this year. “We have no doubt that in the upcoming vote of no confidence, the government will receive support. But for us, the decisions of the National Assembly have meaning only when they express the will of the sovereign,” said Zhelyazkov. A formal vote on government’s resignation must be taken at the next plenary session in parliament, where the coalition still holds a majority. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev will now invite the parliamentary parties to form a new government. If they fail — which is likely — he will appoint a caretaker Cabinet to govern the country until a new election is organized. The mass protests that started in November were provoked by a controversial budget proposal that imposed higher taxes on the private sector while channeling more funds to the state sector — but, ultimately, the budget was only the spark. The real driving force behind the demonstrations has been broader dissatisfaction with the government itself. What began as an economic grievance quickly grew into a nationwide movement calling for accountability, transparency and new leadership. “Our desire is to rise to the level of what society expects. At this moment, as the constitution dictates, power derives from the voice of the people. We hear the voice of the citizens protesting against the government,” Zhelyazkov said. “Young and old, people from different ethnic groups have spoken out for the resignation. We support this civic energy and encourage it,” he added. Bulgaria is preparing to adopt the euro on Jan. 1, with roughly half the population skeptical of the move amid fears of inflation, and disinformation spread by Russia aimed at undermining public support for the single currency.

LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushed back on Wednesday against Donald Trump’s attack on Europe, after the U.S. President described the continent as inept. When asked about Trump’s comments during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the PM said Europe was united and strong. The U.S. president told POLITICO in a wide-ranging interview Monday that Europe was a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people. He added: “I also think that they want to be so politically correct,” and “I think they don’t know what to do.”  But the prime minister rejected Trump’s criticisms and claimed European nations had robust values worth defending. “What I see is a strong Europe, united behind Ukraine and united behind our longstanding values of freedom and democracy,” Starmer told MPs on Wednesday. “I will always stand up for those values and those freedoms.”  The prime minister hosted Germany, France, and Ukraine’s leaders in Downing Street on Monday for crucial talks on Kyiv’s future, as America tries to formulate a deal palatable to both Russia and Ukraine. But the U.S. National Security Strategy released last week said Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries. Starmer’s spokesperson on Wednesday also stood up for Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the capital city’s first Muslim mayor, after Trump singled him out for criticism. In the latest back-and-forth of their long-running feud, Trump told POLITICO that Khan was “a horrible mayor” who had made the British capital city a  “different place” from what it once was. “Those comments are wrong. The mayor of London is doing an excellent job in London,” the PM’s spokesperson said. “The prime minister is hugely proud of the mayor of London’s record and proud to call him a colleague and a friend.”  The spokesperson also rejected the U.S. president’s accusation that Khan had been elected “because so many people have come in” as wrong. Khan told POLITICO Tuesday the U.S. president was “obsessed” with him and claimed Americans were “flocking” to live in London, because its liberal values are the “antithesis” of Trump’s.

BRUSSELS — The EU’s top defense official issued an unusually sharp warning on Wednesday, arguing that the new U.S. National Security Strategy “surprises by its clear antagonism towards the European Union” and amounts to a geopolitical play to prevent Europe from ever becoming a unified power. In a strongly worded blog post published just days after Washington released its 2025 NSS, EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius argued that Washington’s framing of Europe’s supposed “civilizational erasure” is not rooted in genuine concerns about values or democracy, but in hard-edged U.S. geopolitical calculations.  “EU unity is against USA interests,” Kubilius wrote, summarizing the logic he said underpins the Trump administration’s document. He pointed to passages in the strategy urging Washington to “cultivate resistance” inside European countries and to work with nationalist parties opposed to deeper integration, language he interpreted as evidence the U.S. is ready “to fight against the European Union, against our strength through unity.” Trump’s view on Europe was underlined in an interview with POLITICO where he denounced European leaders as “weak” and that he would endorse candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. Kubilius wrote that the U.S. now sees a more cohesive EU as a potential challenger to American influence. “The US National Security Strategy’s antagonistic language on the European Union comes not from American sentimental emotions about ‘good old Europe,’ but from deep strategic considerations,” he wrote. Kubilius linked the strategy’s worldview to the ideas of Elbridge Colby — now a senior Pentagon official — whose book “The Strategy of Denial” argues that the U.S. must prevent any region from forming a dominant power capable of constraining American access to markets.  Kubilius noted that Colby identifies “the European Union or a more cohesive entity emerging from it” as being “capable of establishing regional hegemony and unduly burdening or even excluding US trade and engagement.” Kubilius argued that this strategic perspective, rather than ideological disagreements, explain the NSS’s unusually hostile tone toward Brussels. “Let’s hope,” he concluded, there “will be enough prudence on American soil not to fight against the emerging power of European unity.”

BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump’s overtures to the European far right have never been more overt, but the EU’s biggest far-right parties are split over whether that is a blessing or a curse.  While Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has welcomed Trump’s moral support, viewing it as a way to win domestic legitimacy and end its political ostracization, France’s National Rally has kept its distance — viewing American backing as a potential liability. The differing reactions from the two parties, which lead the polls in the EU’s biggest economies, stem less from varying ideologies than from distinct domestic political calculations. AfD leaders in Germany celebrated the Trump administration’s recent attacks on Europe’s mainstream political leaders and approval of “patriotic European parties” that seek to fight Europe’s so-called “civilizational erasure.” “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy — which, in parts, sounds like it could have been a manifesto of a far-right European party — warning that Europe may be “unrecognizable” in two decades due to migration and a loss of national identities. “The AfD has always fought for sovereignty, remigration, and peace — precisely the priorities that Trump is now implementing,” added Bystron, who will be among a group of politicians in his party traveling to Washington this week to meet with MAGA Republicans. One of the AfD’s national leaders, Alice Weidel, also celebrated Trump’s security strategy. “That’s why we need the AfD!” Weidel said in a post after the document was released. By contrast, National Rally leaders in France were generally silent. Thierry Mariani, a member of the party’s national board, explained Trump hardly seemed like an ideal ally. “Trump treats us like a colony — with his rhetoric, which isn’t a big deal, but especially economically and politically,” he told POLITICO. The party’s national leaders, Mariani added, see “the risk of this attitude from someone who now has nothing to fear, since he cannot be re-elected, and who is always excessive and at times ridiculous.”  AFD’S AMERICAN DREAM It’s no coincidence that Bystron is part of a delegation of AfD politicians set to meet members of Trump’s MAGA camp in Washington this week. Bystron has been among the AfD politicians increasingly looking to build ties to the Trump administration to win support for what they frame as a struggle against political persecution and censorship at home. This is an argument members of the Trump administration clearly sympathize with. When Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declared the AfD to be extremist earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move “tyranny in disguise.” During the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged mainstream politicians in Europe to knock down the “firewalls” that shut out far-right parties from government. “This is direct recognition of our work,” AfD MEP Petr Bystron said in a statement after the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy. | Britta Pedersen/Picture Alliance via Getty Images AfD leaders have therefore made a simple calculation: Trump’s support may lend the party a sheen of acceptability that will help it appeal to more voters while, at the same time, making it politically harder for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives to refuse to govern in coalition with their party. This explains why AfD polticians will be in the U.S. this week seeking political legitimacy. On Friday evening, Markus Frohnmaier, deputy leader of the AfD parlimentary group, will be an “honored guest” at a New York Young Republican Club gala, which has called for a “new civic order” in Germany. NATIONAL RALLY SEES ‘NOTHING TO GAIN’ In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally has distanced itself from the AfD and Trump as part of a wider effort to present itself as more palatable to mainstream voters ahead of a presidential election in 2027 the party believes it has a good chance of winning. As part of the effort to clean up its image, Le Pen pushed for the AfD to be ejected from the Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament last year following a series of scandals that made it something of a pariah. At the same time, National Rally leaders have calculated that Trump can’t help them at home because he is deeply unpopular nationally. Even the party’s supporters view the American president negatively. An Odoxa poll released after the 2024 American presidential election found that 56 percent of National Rally voters held a negative view of Trump. In the same survey, 85 percent of voters from all parties described Trump as “aggressive,” and 78 percent as “racist.”  Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist and leading expert on French and international far-right movements, highlighted the ideological gaps separating Le Pen from Trump — notably her support for a welfare state and social safety nets, as well as her limited interest in social conservatism and religion.  “Trumpism is a distinctly American phenomenon that cannot be transplanted to France,” Camus said. “Marine Le Pen, who is working on normalization, has no interest in being linked with Trump. And since she is often accused of serving foreign powers — mostly Russia — she has nothing to gain from being branded ‘Trump’s agent in France.’” 

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that parts of the U.S. administration’s new National Security Strategy are terrible from Europe’s point of view. “Some of it is comprehensible, some of it is understandable. Some of it is unacceptable to us from a European perspective,” Merz told reporters when asked about the geopolitical strategy and how it would affect the transatlantic relationship. “I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it would need to be saved, we would manage on our own,” he said. Trump’s National Security Strategy released last week, announced a realignment of the geopolitical order while claiming that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries. In the document, the U.S administration also appears to hint it could help ideologically allied European parties, saying “the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.” Trump underscored that aim in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns that aired Tuesday in a special episode of The Conversation podcast, signaling he would endorse European politicians that share his vision. Merz — who commented on Trump’s new geopolitical strategy during a visit to the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where most of the approximately 35,000 U.S. troops in Germany are stationed — said he was not surprised by the general tone of the document, but rather felt reinforced in his assessment that the EU needs to become much more independent from Washington in terms of security and defense. “In my discussions with Americans, I say: ‘America first’ is fine, but ‘America alone’ cannot be in your interest,” Merz said. “You also need partners in the world. One of those partners could be Europe. And if you can’t get on board with Europe, then at least make Germany your partner.” Merz also said Trump had accepted an invitation to Germany in the coming year. Chris Lunday and Hans von der Burchard contributed to this report.

This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor and a foreign affairs columnist at POLITICO Europe. “It must be a policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure,” said former U.S. President Harry Truman during a speech to Congress in 1947. The Truman Doctrine, as this approach became known, saw the defense of democracy abroad as of vital interest to the U.S. — but that’s not a view shared by President Donald Trump and his acolytes. If anyone had any doubts about this — or harbored any lingering hopes that Vice President JD Vance was speaking out of turn when he launched a blistering attack on Europe at the Munich Security Conference earlier this this year — then Washington’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) should settle the matter. All U.S. presidents release such a strategy early in their terms to outline their foreign policy thinking and priorities, which in turn shapes how the Pentagon’s budget is allocated. And with all 33 pages of this NSS, the world’s despots have much to celebrate, while democrats have plenty to be anxious about — especially in Europe. Fleshing out what the Trump administration means by “America First,” the new security strategy represents an emphatic break with Truman and the post-1945 order shaped by successive U.S. presidents. It is all about gaining a mercantilist advantage, and its guiding principle is might is right. Moving forward, Trump’s foreign policy won’t be “grounded in traditional, political ideology” but guided by “what works for America.” And apparently what works for America is to go easy on autocrats, whether theocratic or secular, and to turn on traditional allies in a startling familial betrayal. Of course, the hostility this NSS displays toward Europe shouldn’t come as a surprise — Trump’s top aides have barely disguised their contempt for the EU, while the president has said he believes the bloc was formed to “screw” the U.S. But that doesn’t dull the sting. Over the weekend, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas sought to present a brave face despite the excoriating language the NSS reserves for European allies, telling international leaders at the Doha Forum: “We haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on different topics. But the overall principle is still there: We are the biggest allies, and we should stick together.” But other seasoned European hands recognize that this NSS marks a significant departure from what has come before. “The only part of the world where the new security strategy sees any threat to democracy seems to be Europe. Bizarre,” said former Swedish Prime Minister and European Council on Foreign Relations co-chair Carl Bildt. He’s right. As Bildt noted, the NSS includes no mention, let alone criticism, of the authoritarian behavior of the “axis of autocracy” — China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. It also rejects interventionist approaches to autocracies or cajoling them to adopt “democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories.” For example, the 2017 NSS framed China as a systemic global challenger in very hostile terms. “A geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region,” that document noted. But the latest version contains no such language amid clear signs that Trump wants to deescalate tensions; the new paramount objective is to secure a “mutually advantageous economic relationship.” All should be well as long as China stays away from the Western Hemisphere, which is the preserve of the U.S. — although it must also ditch any idea of invading Taiwan. “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority” the NSS reads. Likewise, much to Moscow’s evident satisfaction, the document doesn’t even cast Russia as an adversary — in stark contrast with the 2017 strategy, which described it as a chief geopolitical rival. No wonder Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov welcomed the NSS as a “positive step” and “largely consistent” with Russia’s vision. “Overall, these messages certainly contrast with the approaches of previous administrations,” he purred. While Beijing and Moscow appear delighted with the NSS, the document reserves its harshest language and sharpest barbs for America’s traditional allies in Europe. “The core problem of the European continent, according to the NSS, is a neglect of ‘Western’ values (understood as nationalist conservative values) and a ‘loss of national identities’ due to immigration and ‘cratering birthrates,’” noted Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The alleged result is economic stagnation, military weakness and civilizational erasure.” The new strategy also lambasts America’s European allies for their alleged “anti-democratic” practices,accusing them of censorship and suppressing political opposition in a dilation of Vance’s Munich criticism. Ominously, the NSS talks about cultivating resistance within European nations by endorsing “patriotic” parties — a threat that caused much consternation when Vance made it, but is now laid out as the administration’s official policy. Regime change for Europe but not for autocracies is cause for great alarm. So how will Europe react? Flatter Trump as “daddy,” like NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte did in June? Pretend the U.S. administration isn’t serious, and muddle through while overlooking slights? Take the punishment and button up as it did over higher tariffs? Or toughen up, and get serious about strategic autonomy? Europe has once again been put on the spot to make some fundamental choices — and quickly. But doing anything quickly isn’t Europe’s strong point. Admittedly, that’s no easy task for a bloc that makes decisions by consensus in a process designed to be agonizingly slow. Nor will it be an easy road at the national level, with all 27 countries facing critical economic challenges and profound political divisions that Washington has been seeking to roil. With the assistance of Trump’s ideological bedfellows like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the impasse will only intensify in the coming months. Trump 2.0 is clearly a disorienting step change from the president’s first term — far more triumphalist, confident, uncompromisingly mercantilist; and determined to ignore guardrails; and more revolutionary in how it implements its “America First” agenda. The NSS just makes this clearer, and the howls of disapproval from critics will merely embolden an administration that sees protest as evidence it’s on the right track. Europe’s leaders have had plenty of warnings, but apart from eye-rolling, hand-wringing and wishful thinking they failed to agree on a plan. However, trying to ride things out isn’t going to work this time around — and efforts to foist a very unfavorable “peace” deal on Ukraine may finally the trigger the great unraveling of the Western alliance. The bloc’s options are stark, to be sure. Whether it kowtows or pushes back, it’s going to cost Europe one way or another.