What European Officials Think About The Chaotic US Presidential Election
This Is What European Officials Think About The US Presidential Election. “We don’t want anything to do with your fucked-up election. Keep us out of it, please,” said one European official. By Christopher Miller, BuzzFeed, Nov. 2, 2020.
For nearly four years, leaders and officials in allied nations across Europe have looked at the United States under President Donald Trump in shock and horror as he insulted European Union leaders and eroded the transatlantic relationship with his “America first” agenda, damaging the US image in the process. They were dismayed after he reportedly called German Chancellor Angela Merkel “stupid” and former UK prime minister Theresa May “a fool.” They were aghast when he called the EU a “foe” and astonished when he said “nobody treats us much worse than the European Union.”
When Trump said NATO was “obsolete,” alarm bells sounded from Brussels to the Baltics.
For most European leaders, more concerning than Trump’s words were his actions, such as withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization and — just this week — blocking the pick to lead the World Trade Organization. After all that, one would think nothing more would come as shock. Yet, in interviews with BuzzFeed News, 4 European diplomats and government officials said they are in utter disbelief over the chaos caused by Trump surrounding the US presidential election. One official, a foreign policy adviser to an EU president, likened this year’s US election to some of the wilder elections on their continent’s fringes — but with significantly bigger and possibly scarier consequences.
“It’s Eastern Europe plus that small nuclear suitcase that Trump has,” said the official, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity to speak freely on sensitive matters.
In Ukraine, where past presidential elections have been tainted by massive fraud and poisonings and colored by bizarre livestreamed drug screenings and debates in sports stadiums, an official inside President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration described the US election as “crazy” and “totally toxic.” All officials who spoke to BuzzFeed News cited the political and racial animus that some people believe has brought the US to the brink of civil war as a major cause for concern. The officials also said they and their European colleagues are stunned by Trump’s antidemocratic rhetoric and his attempts to undermine the legitimacy of the vote by claiming it will be rigged.
Moreover, they said they are unnerved by a sitting US president — the so-called leader of the free world — signaling that he won’t accept the election’s results if he loses.
While none of the officials went so far as to express their support for former vice president Joe Biden, four suggested and one stated explicitly that a victory for the Democratic challenger would be Europe’s preferred outcome. Things wouldn’t go back to normal necessarily or immediately, but with Biden as the victor, said the adviser to an EU president, “there would be an adult in the room that you can talk to, and when he promises something there’s a good level of expectation that he’s going to deliver…which just hasn’t been the case in the last 4 years.” The election comes at a moment when the US seems angrier and more divided than ever, and as a deadly pandemic surges.
As Americans vote by mail or go to the polls in person on Election Day, they will be casting arguably the most consequential vote of their lifetimes. And the consequences of their actions are likely to be felt far behind the borders of the US...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/christopherm51/european-officials-are-in-disbelief-over-the-us-election
