Anne Applebaum has been travelling in Europe and getting an earful. Her observation here is interesting and it certainly rings true to me:
In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a brand new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama, those are also fading fast.
Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” They announced that they would halt transfers of military equipment to Ukraine, and hinted at ending sanctions on Russia, the aggressor state. In his speech to Congress last night, Trump once again declared that America would “get” Greenland, which is a part of Denmark—a sign that he intends to run roughshod over other allies too.
These are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the bad guys. If Reagan was a white-hatted cowboy, Trump and Vance are Mafia dons. The chorus of Republican political leaders defending them seems both sinister and surprising to Europeans too. “I never thought Americans would kowtow like that,” one friend told me, marveling.
The Ugly American stereotype was embarrassing but it wasn’t dangerous. American citizens may have been seen by many as unsophisticated fools when we traveled out of our comfort zone but there was also the recognition that we were a powerful, serious country led by serious people. That’s just not true anymore.
Applebaum makes another observation which is absolutely true. The Trump people are living in a bubble and it’s affecting their ability to understand the world around them:
But Trump and Vance are not interested in the truth about the war in Ukraine. Trump seemed angered by the suggestion that Putin might break deals with him, refused to acknowledge that it’s happened before, falsely insisted, again, that the U.S. had given Ukraine $350 billion. Vance—who had refused to meet Zelensky when offered the opportunity before the election last year—told the Ukrainian president that he didn’t need to go to Ukraine to understand what is going on in his country: “I’ve actually watched and seen the stories,” he said, meaning that he has seen the “stories” curated for him by the people he follows on YouTube or X.
President Trump has ordered a pause to intelligence sharing with Ukraine, said Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, a move that deprives Kyiv of a key tool in fighting Russian forces.
The U.S. suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine earlier this week after a contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday unraveled plans to sign a minerals deal as a first step in bringing Ukraine and Russia to peace talks. Ratcliffe, appearing Wednesday on Fox Business, said Trump, after that meeting, had also “asked for a pause” of intelligence sharing.
The U.S. has shared intelligence with Kyiv since the early months of the war, allowing Ukrainian forces to target Russian forces more effectively.
A White House official said that the U.S. had paused military aid to Ukraine until Trump is satisfied that Zelensky is making a good-faith effort to engage in negotiations to stop the war. Ratcliffe indicated that intelligence sharing could also resume.
Where did Trump get this idea? Well:
“It’s pretty bad,” one source familiar with the arrangement said. “Combined with the stopping of military assistance and foreign aid, it pretty much guarantees a Russian victory without there needing to be a peace deal.”
A top Russian lawmaker, Andrei Kartapolov, in recent days called for the US to stop providing Ukraine with intelligence, underscoring the boon Trump may have already offered Moscow on the battlefield.
“It would be much more important if the Americans stopped giving them with intelligence information, then this would allow us to achieve results more quickly,” Kartapolov said.
Basically, Zelensky has to capitulate to all of Trump’s demands which means licking his boots and agreeing to allow Russia to win the war and take whatever it wants, including retribution. (Trump has already lamented all the Russian losses in the war so I’d expect him to excuse any brutality. To the victor goes the spoils etc, etc. ) That’s what Trump calls “peace.”
Meanwhile Putin is bombarding Kiev on a daily basis so basicallyTrump is killing Ukrainians to extort Zelensky to surrender.
We are now just as bad as Russia, maybe even worse. “Brutes” is actually too kind. We are monsters.
