Trump’s ‘gloves-off Europe mauling’ was a fraternal correction
IT IS difficult not to celebrate Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, so strident and damning that most of the ‘progressives’ seem to have been caught out and have yet to marshal their full-strength vitriol.
There is a sense that the US president, in raising so many subjects simultaneously – exploiting to the full a target-rich environment – has achieved defence saturation. The attacks are so widespread that his numerous critics aren’t quite sure which one to shoot down first.
The whole piece is well worth reading as an angle on the security risk of not taking Trump's criticisms seriously.
The London Times, though, is somewhat more level. It has its Washington editor, Katy Balls, describing the speech as a ‘gloves-off Europe mauling’.
The reason the speech can’t be dismissed as just another Trump diatribe, Balls writes, is that it speaks to a wider concern within the administration. While the President has said he won’t lecture Middle East countries on how to live, members of his cabinet see what’s happening in the UK and Europe on migration and energy as a genuine security risk.
She quotes one Republican as saying: ‘We need our allies to be strong and share our values. If our allies change for good, that is a huge problem for the West’.
The reason the speech can’t be dismissed as just another Trump diatribe, Balls writes, is that it speaks to a wider concern within the administration. While the President has said he won’t lecture Middle East countries on how to live, members of his cabinet see what’s happening in the UK and Europe on migration and energy as a genuine security risk.
She quotes one Republican as saying: ‘We need our allies to be strong and share our values. If our allies change for good, that is a huge problem for the West’.
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