AP Photo/Evan Vucci
France’s largest daily newspaper, Le Monde, published a scathing editorial on Wednesday announcing the “End of the American World” after Donald Trump won Tuesday’s presidential election.
“This time, they made an informed decision. In 2016, when they first entrusted him with the White House, American voters didn’t know what a Donald Trump presidency would be like and were taking a leap into the unknown,” began the editorial, adding:
In 2024, the situation is different: Not only do Republican voters know their candidate inside out, right down to his least glorious behavior, he’s even more radical than he was eight years ago. Trump’s electorate knows where this president is going to take them, and wants more.
It’s a reality that needs to be examined with eyes wide open. The path on which Trump, strengthened for his second term by his party’s success in the Senate, will take his country diverges fundamentally from the one charted by the United States since the end of the Second World War. It marks the end of an American era, that of an open superpower committed to the world, eager to set itself up as a democratic model. It’s the famous “shining city on a hill,” extolled by President Ronald Reagan. The model had been challenged over the past two decades. Now, Trump’s return is putting a nail in its coffin.
The editorial went on to blast Trump’s worldview as overly self-interested – “A world where transactional diplomacy replaces value-based alliances.” Turning its attention to Europe, the paper warned that Trump’s likely placating of Russia’s Vladimir Putin could “fracture” Europe:
If, as he threatened during the campaign, Trump ceases military aid to Ukraine and negotiates peace with Vladimir Putin in favor of the invader, the consequences of such an outcome will go far beyond the fate of Ukraine alone. They will affect the continent’s security as a whole.
There is a real risk that Europe will be divided or even fractured by such a prospect. This threat is existential for the European Union, and its leaders need to be aware of it and prepared to confront it, without waiting for Trump to take office – they are long overdue.
The editorial ended ominously, arguing that the world will “suffer” as a result of the election, “Trump’s voters chose him in full consciousness, as did the business and tech leaders who rallied behind him, following in the footsteps of Elon Musk, the iconoclastic CEO turned eminence grise. The rest of the world will suffer.”
Read the full editorial here.
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