Not us
18% is very good. But the idea that we’re the “hottest” country in the world, as Trump loves to say, is just wrong. We were. And then he took over and we lost all the momentum coming out of the pandemic. Recall that in October of 2024, the Economist said we were the envy of the world.
Nearly half of Europeans see Donald Trump as “an enemy of Europe”, rather more rate the risk of war with Russia as high and more than two-thirds believe their country would not be able to defend itself in the event of such a war, a survey has found.
The nine-country poll for the Paris-based European affairs debate platform Le Grand Continent also found that nearly three-quarters of respondents wanted their country to stay in the EU, with almost as many saying leaving the union had harmed the UK.
Jean-Yves Dormagen, a political science professor and founder of the polling agency Cluster17, said: “Europe is not only facing growing risks, it is also undergoing a transformation of its historical, geopolitical and political environment. The overall picture [of the survey] portrays a Europe that is anxious, that is deeply aware of its vulnerabilities and that is struggling to project itself positively into the future.”
The polling found that an average of 48% of people across the nine countries see Trump as an outright foe – ranging from highs of 62% in Belgium and 57% in France to lows of 37% in Croatia and 19% in Poland.
This is just sad:
There was a brief moment after the cold war when we thought that maybe the world wasn’t going to be divided up among friends and enemies going forward. That was probably a pipe dream. Humans seem to be wired for that. But the way we’ve gone under Donald Trump’s two terms is just depressing.
I still think our alliances can be repaired. But this second term is making it so much harder. Who can possibly trust a country that would elect this ignorant miscreant twice? It’s going to take a long time to regain it.