How Trump’s presidency can be a colossal failure and stunning success all at once
By conventional measures, Donald Trump’s second presidency is already descending into disarray amid a legal morass, self-inflicted errors, and a vast gap between its massive ambition and its capacity to enact that vision.
Yet Trump’s tens of millions of supporters didn’t send a conventional president back to the White House – and don’t judge their hero’s performance by traditional yardsticks.
On one hand, exhausting crises on multiple fronts point to a potentially failed administration. But as Trump attempts to destroy governing structures at home and abroad, chaos is itself a marker of success.
So the question, as Trump transitions from the shock-and-awe euphoria start of his second term to grinding out his priorities, becomes what kind of event could cause these two competing realities to collide.
A recession that the president seems determined to talk the country into might puncture the bubble of achievement that the White House aggressively cultivates each day. High prices and job losses, after all, don’t discriminate between Republican and Democratic voters.
Or perhaps it would take a national security crisis precipitated by his volatile leadership and callow foreign policy team to destroy Trump’s presidency. Even then, Trump’s hold on his supporters is so strong, nothing might shake their confidence even if he alienates the middle-ground voters who helped reelect him. This, after all, is a president who convinced millions that the fair election he lost in 2020 was a stitch-up.
Still, if Trump somehow manages to secure a better deal for US manufacturers with his tariff wars, he might justify the mayhem he’s visited on financial markets. If “America first” really does convince Europe to defend itself and the president’s vows to forge peace work, the world may end up safer.
But hubris is threatening an administration that has made overreaches by previous presidents seem tame by comparison.
“You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority … Americans want you to be president,” Attorney General Pam Bondi gushed to Trump last week during a Cabinet meeting, suggesting the Trump team has misread its supposed mandate.
Trump’s victory, while clear, was not a landslide. Together with a tiny GOP majority in the House, it’s a thin political platform on which to base an attempt to simultaneously remake the global geopolitical system and the world trading paradigm; to transform the US government; and to destroy elite establishment centers of power.
Weeks ago, the Washington narrative was that Trump’s second-term team would be more disciplined and unified than his first. But that’s looking increasingly threadbare. The president badly needs some swift wins – not just those that reward his MAGA base – to sustain his credibility.
Chaos grows the longer Trump is in power
A sense of disorder is mounting.
— Backbiting and organizational chaos at the Pentagon came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed fears about his fitness for the job by posting details of military strikes in Yemen on two Signal chats.
— Trump’s trade wars have wiped trillions off global stock markets and are likely soon to hike prices for inflation-weary US shoppers. His threats against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell have shattered investor confidence. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is heading to its worst April since the Great Depression. And amazingly, the world is wondering whether the dollar is a haven anymore. All of this may be behind an apparent and emerging climbdown that the administration signaled on Tuesday on the China tariffs and Trump’s warnings that he might fire the central bank chief.
— His purge of first-term officials who knew how Washington worked is resulting in embarrassing accidents. An undocumented migrant from Maryland was deported by mistake to El Salvador, igniting a massive legal showdown. And the administration set off a feud with Harvard University, apparently by mistake.
— Trump’s claims that the force of his personality alone would end wars made him look foolish. His Ukraine peace effort looks amateur. Carnage is still raging in Gaza. He’s destroyed America’s closest diplomatic friendship, with Canada, with unhinged demands it become the 51st state. His bullying means many tourists are staying away, frightened by potential harassment at US borders. Allies are making alternative arrangements, thereby diminishing American power.
— There has been no blizzard of lawmaking to bolster Trump’s claims he’s had the most successful first 100 days in generations. How Republicans will pass his huge tax plan is unclear. And a future Democratic president could wipe out his multitudes of executive orders with a stroke of their own pen.
— Tax season at the Internal Revenue Service was marked by dysfunction, with a revolving door of acting commissioners at the key agency.
— Elon Musk’s evisceration of the US government may be setting up a series of disasters that are not yet evident. Massive funding cuts may gut US emergency preparedness as hurricane season approaches. Canceled health research on diseases like cancer may cause unnecessary deaths in years to come. The mistaken firing and hurried rehiring of technicians who look after nuclear weapons seems like an emblem of the Tesla chief’s tenure in Washington, which he said on Tuesday he’d soon begin to scale back.
— And Trump’s incessant demands for more power have pushed the United States to the brink of one of the worst constitutional crises in 250 years. The forest of legal challenges has also severely disrupted many of the administration’s top priorities, including its signature mass deportation program.
A different world
The White House, however, insists that such damning assessments do not recognize what it regards as a spectacular record of success.
And while Trump world’s creation of alternative facts has reached stunning new heights in his second term, there is some logic to their arguments.
The president has never made much pretense of governing for the entire country. His presidencies have been a long succession of attempts to gratify his political base.
That lens is the best way to understand his second term.
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is the culmination of decades of conservative hopes to dismantle the mighty federal machine. This is not just an ideological goal, although hostility to government is one of the few common themes of two great GOP codes, Reaganism and Trumpism. Many Republican officials believe that the civil service has always been a liberal check on their presidents’ power. And if attempts to shatter that stranglehold don’t ultimately result in the full dismantling of what Trump first-term political guru Steve Bannon calls the administrative state, then paralyzing government might work almost as well. It’s going to be all but impossible for a future Democratic president to quickly rebuild what Musk has destroyed.
Trump’s belief in almost absolute presidential power horrifies his critics. But millions of Americans voted for this. He made no secret on the campaign trail of his intention to weaponize presidential power and the Justice Department to pursue his enemies. “It’s good to have a strong man at the head of a country,” Trump reflected during a campaign appearance in early 2024, in remarks that explain his domestic and foreign policies.
One of the most controversial aspects of that vision is playing out in the deportations of undocumented migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, including that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
But the White House loves the fight. It’s failed to prove Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a gang member. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stoked the fire again on Tuesday. “We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal criminal from our community.” When Trump said last week that he’d like to deport US citizen criminals to El Salvador, he knew his audience. And on this immigration issue, he has some genuine results to show for his efforts. Border crossings are down significantly compared with the days of the Biden administration.
Trump’s tariff wars seem insane to Wall Street investors and middle-class Americans who’ve seen their 401(k) plans plummet. But the Trump administration is betting on a different audience – working Americans in rural areas and states devastated by globalization who helped elect him twice. “We shipped countless jobs overseas and, with them, our capacity to make things – from furniture, appliances, and even weapons of war,” Vice President JD Vance said in India on Tuesday. He added: “Many were proud of where they came from: their way of life, the kind of jobs they worked, and the kind of jobs their parents worked before them.”
Trump’s America first creed horrifies the foreign policy establishment and threatens to undo generations of US leadership. But those are the same experts who ran the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and are reviled by Trump’s base. America’s reputation abroad is being slammed by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, genuflection to Russian President Vladimir Putin and abandonment of Africa. But Trump and his supporters care little for allies. He’d rather be feared than liked.
A veteran of those early 21st-century wars, Hegseth now runs the Pentagon. His defenestration of senior uniformed officers who advocated diversity might be unfairly wrecking military careers and rocking the leadership of the world’s most lethal military. But the former Fox News anchor has the support of conservative media – one reason Trump is standing by him despite reports of his cavalier attitude to classified information. Leavitt hinted at the strategy behind Hegseth’s selection and retention on Tuesday, saying, “There’s a lot of people in this city who reject monumental change, and I think, frankly, that’s why we’ve seen a smear campaign against the secretary of defense since the moment that President Trump announced his nomination before the United States Senate.”
A similar distaste for the establishment also explains Trump’s showdown with Harvard. It might have been mistakenly started, but the clash is exactly the kind of issue the White House seeks – placing Trump on the side of the overwhelming majority of Americans who didn’t attend Ivy League colleges. If Democrats chose to defend these bastions of elitism, so much the better for Trump’s political cause.
History will form its own judgments on the second term of Trump. But as the daily pandemonium unfolds, it’s worth remembering that this divisive presidency can look like a dangerous failure to half the country while manifesting as a stunning success to the other half.
If America was ever united by a common version of reality, that’s no longer the case.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
US consumer sentiment plummets to second-lowest level on records going back to 1952
President Donald Trump’s volatile trade war, which threatens higher inflation, has significantly weighed on Americans’ moods these past few months.
Americans are rarely this pessimistic about the economy.
Consumer sentiment plunged 11% this month to a preliminary reading of 50.8, the University of Michigan said in its latest survey released Friday, the second-lowest reading on records going back to 1952. April’s reading was lower than anything seen during the Great Recession.
President Donald Trump’s volatile trade war, which threatens higher inflation, has significantly weighed on Americans’ moods these past few months. That malaise worsened leading up to Trump’s announcement last week of sweeping tariffs, according to the survey.
“This decline was, like the last month’s, pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region and political affiliation,” Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, said in a release.
“Sentiment has now lost more than 30% since December 2024 amid growing worries about trade war developments that have oscillated over the course of the year,” she added.
Tracking US consumer sentiment
The Index of Consumer Sentiment in the US was down in April by about 8% from March. It was below the 20-year average. The index is derived from surveys that ask Americans about their current financial situation and their expectations for the future. A higher index value suggests that consumers are confident, while a lower value indicates caution or pessimism.
The Federal Reserve and Wall Street are watching closely how souring sentiment translates into consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of the US economy, and whether Americans lose faith that inflation will return to normal in the coming years.
Trump on Wednesday paused his massive tariff hike on dozens of countries for 90 days, but kept in place a 10% baseline duty for all imports into the US and separate tariffs on specific products and commodities. The so-called reciprocal tariffs, albeit short lived, were the sharpest increase in US duties ever on data going back 200 years, Fitch Ratings told CNN
China, however, wasn’t included in Trump’s tariff reprieve, continuing a contentious tit-for-tat between the world’s two largest economies that stretched into Friday, with Beijing jacking up its retaliatory tariffs on US imports to 125% from 84%.
The Michigan survey was fielded between March 25 and April 8, so it doesn’t capture respondents’ reaction to the recently announced tariff delay.
The relationship between sentiment and spending
In economics, surveys are referred to as “soft data” and measures capturing actual economic activity, such as retail sales, are known as “hard data.”
The soft data has clearly deteriorated because of Trump’s tariffs: The latest Michigan survey showed that “the share of consumers expecting unemployment to rise in the year ahead increased for the fifth consecutive month and is now more than double the November 2024 reading and the highest since 2009,” according to a release.
Yet, the hard data still looks decent. Employers continue to hire at a brisk pace and shoppers haven’t convincingly reined in their spending just yet, though retail sales have come in weaker than expected recently.
“Sometimes the surveys are very negative, but they keep spending,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week at an event near Washington, DC. “People spent right through the pandemic and they spent right through this time of higher inflation.”
Still, the hard data could take a turn for the worse. New York Fed President John Williams said Friday at an event in Puerto Rico that he expects economic growth to slow sharply this year, pushing up unemployment, and for inflation to accelerate.
“Given the combination of the slowdown in labor force growth due to reduced immigration and the combined effects of uncertainty and tariffs, I now expect real GDP growth will slow considerably from last year’s pace, likely to somewhat below 1%,” he said.
Spending by better-off Americans has played a key role in keeping the US economy humming along these past few years, but the recent turbulence on Wall Street, triggered by Trump’s tariffs, is putting that under threat.
“Wealthy consumers’ stock market gains kept the economy growing in 2024 despite high prices, but the wealthy won’t feel confident enough to keep spending if this keeps up,” Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank, wrote in a recent analyst note.
Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, said Friday that today’s dense fog of uncertainty, triggered by Trump’s tariffs, is reminiscent of the 2008 global financial crisis.
“We’ve seen periods like this before when there were large, structural shifts in policy and markets — like the financial crisis, Covid-19 and surging inflation in 2022. We always stayed connected with clients, and some of BlackRock’s biggest leaps in growth followed,” Fink said.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon echoed that sentiment, noting Friday after the bank released its latest quarterly earnings: “The economy is facing considerable turbulence (including geopolitics), with the potential positives of tax reform and deregulation and the potential negatives of tariffs and ‘trade wars.’”
A growing worry for the Fed
There’s one survey-based measure that matters a whole lot for the Fed: Americans’ perception of prices. It’s critical because they can be self-fulfilling — if people expect inflation to climb and remain elevated in the long run, they adjust their spending accordingly.
So far, that measure has been trending in the wrong direction: Expectations for inflation rates in the year ahead surged to 6.7% this month from 5% in March, the highest level since 1981, while expectations for the next five to 10 years climbed to 4.4% from 4.1%.
If people do lose faith that inflation will ever get back to normal in the coming years, that would make it extremely difficult for the Fed’s monetary policy to fight inflation.
“History teaches that when higher inflation expectations become entrenched, the road back to price stability is longer, the labor market is weaker and the economic scars are deeper,” Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan said Thursday at an event in Dallas.
Inflation expectations these days may be more susceptible than usual to becoming “un-anchored,” since consumers just experienced a period of high inflation, leaving many Americans particularly sensitive to elevated prices.
American Battleground: Trump returns to power with ‘shock and awe’
American Battleground: Trump returns to power with ‘shock and awe’
Editor’s Note: President Donald Trump’s blitz against political norms sent shock waves through the federal government. Unlike his first term, he and his team arrived with extensive plans for bold action, some of which constitutional scholars have said may be illegal. This is Part 1 of an in-depth, contemporaneous look at the first 100 days of Trump’s second term.
Bitter gusts are sweeping the frozen Potomac River, driving the wind chill into the teens. On the western front of the United States Capitol, rows of folding chairs are frosted and empty. Snow flurries howl above the iconic dome, but beneath it, the “Apotheosis of Washington” glows against the ceiling of the Rotunda. The grand painting by an Italian immigrant depicts the ascension of the nation’s first president as a matter not merely of politics, but of divine inspiration. One hundred and eighty feet below, Donald Trump is summoning his own spiritual fire to heat the room.
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he says to the cheering mass of VIPs driven inside by the weather. Never mind that Trump neglects to place his hand on the two Bibles held up for the oath; he and many of his supporters profess absolute faith that a failed assassination attempt, the electoral stumbles of the Democrats and Trump’s triumphant return to his lost place of power are signs of destiny.
“The golden age of America begins right now!” he says. “From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration, I will, very simply, put America first!”
His pronouncement is laced with hope for the political right, considering that the Republican Party holds the reins in all three branches of government. He is surrounded by conservative flamethrowers of the MAGA empire alongside old-fashioned, orthodox Republicans united in their zeal to do his bidding.
Tech giants are also crowding around, representing some of the most powerful companies on Earth: Amazon, Meta, Google, Tesla and SpaceX. If Forbes’ estimate of Trump’s net worth — over $4 billion — is correct, he is only the ninth-richest person in the room. The top four — Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Bernard Arnault — have a combined worth of more than a trillion dollars — enough to give away a million dollars a day for nearly 3,000 years. Their presence underscores how this presidency is fused to the economic elites in a way modern politics has not seen so openly since the Gilded Age, when robber barons ran rampant — an era Trump admires.
“These most powerful rich people, you know, kissing the ring, essentially, at his inauguration. That was the most remarkable thing to me,” says Zachary Wolf, a senior writer for CNN.
With so much money, power and possibility in the air, in the opening minutes of this address some political watchers wonder whether it will signal a new age — a time in which Trump will feel secure enough to turn to optimism, progress and building the unified electorate he says he wants.
Then the tirade begins.
For the next half-hour Trump lashes the preceding administration as a rattletrap of incompetence, corruption and dishonesty. The outgoing president, Joe Biden, slumps behind him. Trump rails against those who prosecuted and, in some cases, convicted him of legal malfeasance. He roars about the whole idea of anyone doubting he would be back, bigger and bolder than ever.
“Many people thought it was impossible for me to stage such a historic political comeback,” Trump crows at a highpoint. “But as you see today, here I am. The American people have spoken.”
Then he rolls out his wish list for the coming four years, and jaws start dropping.
Trump barrels ahead
During the campaign, a 900-plus-page inaugural agenda drawn up by the conservative Heritage Foundation became a lightning rod. Although the screed thrilled Republicans, Democrats called “Project 2025” a battle plan to eviscerate the federal government. During the campaign, it was a central attack line for Democrats to say Project 2025 would be used to weaponize the Justice Department in pursuit of the president’s personal vendettas, tighten immigration laws, restrict women’s health rights, neuter the media, restrict freedom of speech, attack educational institutions, demonize racial minorities, twist elections and much more.
Dozens of MAGA insiders wereinvolved in crafting the document, and some of them are part of the new White House team. But Trump has repeatedly denied any real knowledge of it. “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” he said during his September debate with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Four months later, Trump begins executing the prescribed steps with a flurry of actions designed to erase the legacy of his predecessor, bewilder the opposition, and radically reshape the government before political foes or the courts can stop him.
At DC’s Capital One Arena, a huge crowd, which had been kept away from what’s normally an outdoor ceremony by the cold, explodes as he mounts the stage just hours after the swearing-in.
“Did you like my speech?” Trump mugs to the sea of smiles and cheers as he launches into the kind of flamboyant political show he loves. He signs a stack of executive orders. In minutes, he unwinds 78 of Biden’s executive orders, withdraws the US from the Paris climate agreement, partially freezes government hiring and many regulations, requires federal workers to return to their offices full time, and declares that some might not need to bother. “Most of those bureaucrats are being fired,” he tells the crowd. “They’re gone.”
A woman yells, “We love you, President Trump!” A man shouts, “Can I have a pen?”
Back at the White House, he settles behind the Resolute Desk with an expression of deep satisfaction and puts his pen to another set of papers, and a storm erupts among Democrats — and some Republicans, too.
What to know about Trump’s proposal to carve up Ukraine
Russia’s war on Ukraine may be entering a pivotal moment.
President Donald Trump, who CNN reported Friday has been surprised and frustrated at the difficulty of achieving his promise of ending the war, wants Ukraine to give up territory in exchange for peace and essentially cede control of Crimea, the peninsula Russia first invaded in 2014.
Russia controls nearly 20% of Ukraine, much of which could be lost under the current US proposal.
The US is considering recognizing Crimea as part of Russia, even though its seizure was against international law.
All Russian President Vladimir Putin has to do, in Trump’s thinking, is stop fighting, leaving Putin richly rewarded for invading Ukraine if he is able to officially keep so much territory. If Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky won’t budge, the US has threatened to withdraw support for Ukraine.
What’s been happening?
Trump’s top emissary, Steve Witkoff, met in person with Putin Friday in Moscow.
Ukrainians have been in talks with Americans and Europeans in London, pursuing their version of a plan, in which a ceasefire would come before any discussion of ceding territory.
Trump and Zelensky will both be at the Pope’s funeral in Rome over the weekend.
Whether there will be a breakthrough for peace, the entire two-tracked process blows up, or inertia sets in and the war continues could become clear in the coming days.
Meanwhile, hostilities continue. A Russian general was killed in a car bomb near Moscow Friday. Russian strikes are still targeting Ukraine’s cities, despite Trump’s admonition to Putin on social media, “Vladimir STOP.”
Will Ukraine give up on Crimea?
Trump thinks so.
“Crimea will stay with Russia,” he told Time on April 22. “And Zelensky understands that, and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time,” Trump said.
Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014 but despite moral outrage and sanctions, it did not face other consequences like it did later when it tried to invade the rest of Ukraine in 2022. Trump’s proposal for a cease fire seems to start with the idea that Crimea will be controlled by Russia.
Zelensky has publicly rejected the idea of ceding Crimea.
But other key Ukrainians seem to be open to the idea. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, a former champion boxer, told the BBC he is not involved in negotiations but that giving up Crimea might be necessary.
“It’s not fair. But for the peace, temporary peace, maybe it can be a solution, temporary,” Klitschko said.
Would a Crimea concession lead to a peace plan?
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius argues that if the two sides can get past the Crimea issue, other details could be worked out, including whether European troops will backstop Ukraine’s security, and whether the US will have a presence, perhaps securing and running a nuclear power plant.
CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh isn’t so sure, in large part because it’s not at all clear what Trump wants from Putin and whether Putin will give anything up. He writes:
The overriding problem is Putin thinks time is on his side and Trump has repeatedly said the clock is ticking. These two contrasting positions will not yield a lasting deal. The Kremlin has perhaps wisely ascertained it can, over months, hive off tiny concessions from the White House, and slowly build a geopolitical picture that is more in its favour. Consider the first 90 days of Trump’s presidency and how far the world has already changed in Moscow’s favour.
What’s wrong with the US recognizing Crimea as part of Russia?
Russia violated international law by invading Crimea, as CNN’s Ivana Kottosová writes. Zelensky has so far rejected the idea of ceding Crimea, noting that to do so would violate Ukraine’s Constitution.
If the US were to recognize Crimea as Russian, it would break America’s word multiple times over.
From Kottosová’s report:
Recognizing Crimea as part of Russia would put the Trump administration in breach of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, in which the US made a commitment to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders, in exchange for Kyiv giving up its nuclear weapons.
In 2018, during the first Trump administration, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement reaffirming the US’ refusal to recognize the Kremlin’s claims of sovereignty over Crimea.
What does it mean if Putin is able to keep Crimea?
“That means that he has basically upended the international order,” retired Col. Cedric Leighton, a CNN military analyst, said on CNN Friday. “In essence, what he’s done is created a situation where we go back to the 19th century, where might makes right, and that is what he wants,” Leighton said, comparing Putin’s actions to the invasion by Nazi Germany of Czechoslovakia in the 1930s.
Ukrainians feel Crimea has been part of their country since the fall of the Soviet Union. In the decade-plus since Russia seized it Putin has worked to “Russify” Crimea. There are also resource considerations since Crimea and other contested portions of Ukraine are rich in oil, natural gas and other resources. Finally, Crimea sits on the Black Sea and offers important strategic advantages to Russia.
What if Zelensky won’t budge and the US, as it has threatened, walks away?
“What ‘walk away’ means is still a question that no one has really clear insight to,” according to Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and former US Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia.
“Does it just mean that the United States will no longer be engaged in the diplomatic process in trying to end the war? Or does it mean that the United States will actually pack up and go home entirely, including ending any remaining military aid?” she told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga on CNN Max.
Would Ukraine still fight without US support?
Ukraine does rely on US support, particularly for air defenses and for intelligence. But it has also built up its own resources and leans on Europe.
“Ukrainians will not stop fighting if the United States packs up its bags and walks away,” Kendall-Taylor said.
It’s Ukrainian drones that are causing most of the casualties on Russian soldiers at this point, she said. Ukrainians are also producing longer-range drones that can strike within Russia, which means Ukraine may prefer to play for time to “convince Putin that he can’t stay in this conflict indefinitely.”
Does Putin have any incentive to end the war?
“Not a lot,” according to Kendall-Taylor. “And that’s exactly why we’ve seen such intransigence on his part in making any progress towards the war.”
“It’s really in his interest to continue with the foot dragging, to try to demonstrate that they (Russia) are playing along so that they can preserve the US-Russia relationship,” she said.
“(Putin’s) preferred outcome would be to preserve that relationship and get the United States to abandon Ukraine,” she said.
Will Europe fill a US void?
Michael Kimmage, a former State Department specialist on Russia and Ukraine who now directs the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center told me that it already seems unlikely the US Congress will approve more spending to help Ukraine and that Europe, particularly Germany, is moving to step into that void.
“This is profound,” he said of Germany’s pivot to prioritize security in its spending.
“In a way, Trump is radicalizing German foreign policy, and there’s a need to go as fast as possible in the direction of independence (from the US), he said.
“If Germany is going to spend a trillion dollars on defense in the next couple of years, a lot of that is going to go to go to Ukraine, or it’s going to be a backstop to supporting Ukraine.”
But that’s a pivot that will take time.
“It’s not as if the Germany can fill in on the in the short term for the United States, but it can balance out the erratic and basically anti-Ukraine nature of the Trump presidency,” he said.
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