When US President Donald Trump has spoken about Europe so far, it has been with a mixture of historical ignorance and substantive nonsense. Europe was founded “to screw the United States,” he said in the wake of the tariff dispute, i.e. to rip off the USA, to put it politely. Trump probably doesn’t know that the Marshall Plan was intended to help rebuild Europe, but also help the American economy. He also doesn’t care that both sides of the Atlantic have benefited in many areas from the cooperation of free societies, and that democracy and freedom were the essential basis for transatlantic cooperation after 1945.
