Eine kurze Geschichtsstunde für die USA aus den europäischen Freeloaders

We are now in a time where things can be astonishing without being surprising. Thus, while we can certainly be astonished that the various members of Donald Trump’s clown car of an administration managed to screw up this badly, I’m not sure anybody could truly claim to find it surprising. Dive into the detail, though, and some bits were both.

“I just hate bailing out the Europeans again,” wrote JD Vance. “I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It’s PATHETIC,” wrote Hegseth. Stephen Miller, the homeland security adviser, went on to suggest there should be “some further economic gain extracted in return”. In public, the administration talks like this all the time. When they do it in private, the surprising realisation is that they really mean it.

As a shock tactic, true, scaring Europe into rearmament has worked. What Vance and his colleagues seem to have forgotten, though, is that what America now wants — essentially for other countries to have the capability to fight wars all by themselves — is exactly what, until very recently, America did not want at all

It was clearly intentionally leaked. They don’t think freeloading is pathetic because they are all freeloaders themselves. They just wouldn’t say it in private.