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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Peter Beaumont

Trump lambasts ‘weak’ and ‘decaying’ Europe and hints at walking away from Ukraine

Trump leads a roundtable discussion at the White House in Washington on Monday
Trump at the White House on Monday. In his often halting remarks to Politico, the president swerved from subject to subject while repeating familiar grudges and conspiracies. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

Donald Trump has hinted he could walk away from supporting Ukraine as he doubled down on his administration’s recent criticism of Europe, describing it as “weak” and “decaying” and claiming it was “destroying itself” through immigration.

In a rambling and sometimes incoherent interview with Politico, a transcript of which was released on Tuesday, the US president struggled to name any other Ukrainian cities except for Kyiv, misrepresented elements of the trajectory of the conflict, and recycled far-right tropes about European immigration that echoed the “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

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