Trump’s America Rewrites Who Deserves Protection
Orbán gets praise, Europe gets called rot, and Ukraine is told, politely, that survival now depends on staying useful to the culture war.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy wakes up to news that his democratic legitimacy has been questioned by the most powerful man in the world.
Not by Putin. By America.
By the country that spent eighty years promising that freedom matters. That democracy is worth defending. That the West stands together.
That promise died in December 2025.
It died when Donald Trump declared that Europe is decaying. When he said most European nations, they’re, they’re decaying. They’re decaying. When he questioned whether Ukraine is even a democracy anymore because they’re using war not to hold an election.
The repetition matters. Decaying. Decaying. You don’t save something that’s decaying. You walk away from it. You let it rot.
Trump knows exactly what he’s doing.
The 2025 National Security Strategy, released days before the interview, codifies the contempt. It declares that Europe faces the prospect of civilizational erasure. It warns that should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less.
This is Great Replacement theory. Elevated to official United States government policy.
The document doesn’t just observe European politics. It promises to cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations. That phrase—cultivate resistance—is what America says about Iran. About Venezuela. About enemies.
Now it’s what America says about Germany. About France. About its oldest allies.
The human cost of this language is immediate and measurable. Ukrainian soldiers are dying while Trump publicly declares that Russia has the upper hand. While he says Zelenskyy has to get on the ball and start accepting things. While he frames territorial concessions as inevitable because when you’re losing, you compromise.
Zelenskyy isn’t losing because of military reality. He’s losing because Trump is speaking Russian talking points into existence. Because the American president is doing Putin’s psychological warfare for him.
Every time Trump questions Ukrainian democracy, he gives congressional Republicans permission to block aid. Every time he says Europe is weak, he tells Eastern European nations they’re on their own. Every time he praises Viktor Orbán and attacks Olaf Scholz, he tells authoritarians that America now picks winners based on ideology, not democracy.
Civilizational Security. Not democratic security. Not human rights. Civilization. Blood and soil dressed up in strategic language.
And Trump has a list. Austria. Hungary. Italy. Poland. These are the countries the National Security Strategy explicitly names as partners to work more with... with the goal of pulling them away from the European Union.
The infrastructure is already being built. The Heartland Institute is advising Reform UK. American think tanks are meeting with far-right MEPs to undermine climate policy. JD Vance is touring Europe attacking the EU as a threat to free speech. The pipeline runs from MAGA rallies in Ohio straight to Alternative für Deutschland rallies in Berlin.
This is a trans-Atlantic culture war. And the casualties are real.
Migrants crossing the Mediterranean hear Trump validate the civilizational erasure narrative. They hear him say London and Paris are no longer recognizable. They understand perfectly what that means. That their presence is the decay. That their children are the erasure. That they are the threat Trump’s America now organizes against.
Sadiq Khan reads the words horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor and understands perfectly. His crime wasn’t policy. It was existing. Being visible. Being proof that integration works.
A Polish official calculates whether accepting Ukrainian refugees disqualifies his country from American protection. A Baltic diplomat wonders if asylum law is now a security risk.
Trump told them all the same thing. That their democracy doesn’t count. That their values are decay. That survival means submission.
They know what it depends means. They know what civilizational erasure means. They know what happens when the most powerful nation on Earth decides that some lives matter and others rot.
They know because they’re living the answer.