For President Trump, this was a Daniel in the lions’ den moment. He was addressing a world body that the US administration openly portrays as increasingly irrelevant, corrupt and in steep decline.
There is no love lost between the White House and the United Nations, and the United States has recently withdrawn from several UN organisations, including its Human Rights Council; the Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation; and the Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
Trump’s administration has meanwhile faced a wave of attacks from UN officials over everything from deportation policies to its steadfast support for Israel.
So it is hardly surprising his message to the UN was blunt and hard–hitting.
He had no time for calls from the UK, Australia, Canada and France for the recognition of a Palestinian state, keeping the pressure firmly on Hamas to release the remaining hostages.
But his full–throated blast on Europe to an audience containing the ruling elites of the EU stunned the watching world.
We know Trump is a strong critic of the European Union, even if he has built a close working relationship with some key European leaders, including Italy‘s Giorgia Meloni and Poland‘s new president Karol Nawrocki.
US President Donald Trump delivers his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York City yesterday
Yet the scale of this public attack on Europe – a continent he cherishes, incidentally – was of a new order.
What is more, it will have hit home, for it contained any number of home truths – even if the likes of French president Emmanuel Macron, German chancellor Friedrich Merz or British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer did not want to hear them.
End open borders. Stop importing criminals. Defend your sovereignty. Fight Islamist extremism. Stand up for Christianity. End vastly expensive Net Zero climate policies.
Because if you do not do so, he told Europe’s leaders, ‘your countries are going to Hell’.
Melodramatic maybe. But also an extraordinary – and timely – wake–up call. For even if those leaders he was addressing are burying their heads in the sand on these vital issues, their voters are not.
Trump’s message will have resonated with tens of millions of ordinary people across Europe, including in the UK, who are angry and in despair over the impact of mass migration, both legal and illegal, into their countries.
The US President’s address tapped into the winds of change that are blowing across the continent, with a rise in support for national conservative or populist parties, from Britain to France and Germany, Spain, Austria and the Netherlands.
Even Trump’s harshest critics in Europe will surely acknowledge that what he is saying about the need to emphatically confront illegal migration is the biggest issue facing the West today.
President Trump also took a verbal flamethrower to the Net Zero–driven climate change agenda, which he rightly argued is hugely expensive and has minimal impact, while costing European economies vast amounts of money.
Trump is no fan of the EU’s Green Deal, and has withdrawn the United States for a second time from the Paris Climate Accords, which the US rejoined under President Biden in 2021.
And in a direct appeal to America’s European Nato allies, he called upon Europe to end all energy purchases from Russia, in an effort to end the war in Ukraine.
As Trump pointed out, Europe cannot fight the Russian war machine while at the same time funding it. Shamefully, European nations bought more than £6billion of liquefied natural gas from Moscow last year.
The European Union remains the world’s biggest purchaser of Russian gas, and continues to buy more than 50 per cent of it.
President Trump’s tough–love approach towards Europe has so far succeeded. Following intense pressure from the Trump presidency, Nato leaders committed to spending at least 5 per cent of GDP on defence at a recent summit in The Hague.
I expect Trump’s message at the UN on the need to defend Europe’s sovereignty and follow America’s example by securing borders will likewise be increasingly heeded by European governments who are facing growing unrest at home and rising competition from populist movements that are gaining ground politically.
Love him, or loathe him, as many of his adversaries and critics do at the UN, President Trump is always guaranteed to deliver a powerful message that shakes up world bodies and international elites.
His UN address is a game–changer for Europe, and a rallying cry for the defence of Western civilisation. This is a president who cares deeply about Europe’s future, and the security of the West.
Nile Gardiner is a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, and is based in Washington DC.
