USA: Trump's MAGA movement hates Europe – but why? | Capital+

When the U.S. State Department published an essay late last month accusing Europe of waging an "aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself," some dismissed it as a joke. The author, Sam Samson, was a little-known adviser to Secretary of State Marco Rubio who only graduated from college in 2021. The only thing that gave some skeptics pause was that Samson's post appeared on the department's official Substack account.

In his essay, Samson accused European governments of "backsliding" on democracy and "weaponizing political institutions against their own citizens." This essay bluntly exposes the deepening ideological divide between President Donald Trump's administration and the EU. It's an estrangement that has implications for the future of the Western alliance.