America voted; Europe lost its bet. Donald Trump is back and will face a panicked henhouse that calls itself the European Union, where some of the chickens are running around without their heads. That is especially clear from the perspective of Luxembourg. None of the governments in our neighboring countries holds a parliamentary majority. Emmanuel Macron is weak, and Olaf Scholz has to face new elections, and so it is Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prince, Trump’s best European buddy, who toasted the new president and crowed to Europe without much resistance.
Trump won the election decisively and is on track to win the popular vote, too. Control over Congress is also within the MAGA man’s reach.* There won’t be much left to restrain Trump from restructuring or disassembling the institutions of the United States. He will select his team and his administration based on who presents the least resistance. Just before the election, Trump reportedly said he wanted “the kind of generals Hitler had,” henchmen instead of advisers. And what the master wants, he will surely give himself.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourger who Trump probably knows best and who, as EU Commission president, negotiated with the U.S. president, warned after the U.S. election that Trump should be taken seriously. The problem with that will be Trump’s characteristic unpredictability. Trump does what he wants, when he wants, how he wants, and that is by no means anything new; everyone has known it since his first term from 2017 to 2021, when they said Trump turned something, somewhere, upside down with a daily tweet. Another important reason making it difficult to take Trump seriously is that the man is a notorious liar.
Still, Juncker is right, and so we have no choice but to take the dangerous people of the world at their word, and Trump will join them in January. The fact that Trump will again occupy the most powerful office in the world will rupture not only the U.S. The U.S. election represents a turning point for the entire world, including Europe. Trump’s election will subject democracy to another stress test. Having someone in the Oval Office who admires autocrats and has a penchant for ranting and the boorish attitude of a schoolyard bully is not what anyone wants in these uncertain times.
You could start worrying to death about what Trump has planned for America. He wants to conduct mass deportations of millions of immigrants no matter the cost, as he emphasized again after the election. But that will be an issue for the Americans. For us in Europe, this election must be the last shot across the bow before we finally stand on our own two feet. Our goal cannot be to buddy up with the bull. So, good night, U.S., wake up, Europe!
*Editor’s note: Donald Trump has won the popular vote, and the Republican Party is expected to hold a majority in both houses of Congress in 2025.
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