US President Donald Trump deepened his rift with Europe in an interview published Tuesday, calling it “decaying” and blasting key allies as “weak” over immigration and Ukraine.
Speaking to Politico, Trump also called on Ukraine to hold elections despite Russia’s invasion and questioned whether the country is truly democratic under President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump doubled down on his recent extraordinary criticisms of Europe, following the release of the new US national security strategy last week that recycled far-right tropes as it warned of civilisational decline on the continent.
“Most European nations, they’re, they’re decaying. They’re decaying,” Trump told Politico in the interview, conducted on Monday.
The 79-year-old billionaire, whose political rise to power was built on inflammatory language about migration, echoed far-right talking points as he said that Europe’s policies on migrants were a “disaster”.
“They don’t want to send them back to where they came from,” Trump said.