JD Vance has suggested that American support for NATO should be predicated on the European Union not regulating Elon Musk and his X social media platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The Republican vice presidential nominee and Ohio senator claimed in an interview with YouTuber Shawn Ryan that a top EU official had threatened to arrest the billionaire if he allowed former President Donald Trumpback on X.
“The leader, I forget exactly which official it was within the European Union, but sent Elon this threatening letter that basically said, ‘We’re going to arrest you if you platform Donald Trump,’ who, by the way, is the likely next president of the United States,” Vance said in the interview published last week.
Only problem here is that Trump is famous for not paying his debts.
He doesn’t play bureaucracy games; he just stops spending money in certain areas and lets the bureaucrats scramble to make it OK.
In other words, I see the US stopping all engagement with NATO and a EU/US tariff war in the future — IF he can pull it off in four years.
But see here the users are the product. And the users come from Europe. Which has certain regulations. Unless they abide, then they don’t get all that sweet product.
What they don’t understand is that European bureaucracy doesn’t play politics.
Frankly if the US starts playing the petulant child I can see the EU make their own version of NATO and keep the us-tantrum version as a side hustle for them to ignore at will. The new version might be smaller in scope, but places/bases far beyond the EU borders would not matter much anymore.
Also, the whole NATO treaty is linked to cable and transmission espionage … If NATO breaks apart, no more spy data going to the US …
When push comes to shove and Trump flings tariffs at the EU it’ll be because he already tanked the US economy with tariffs on “chaina” and needs a new scapegoat. And he hopes new tariffs on a different target will keep the finances afloat, refusing to see his tariffs hurt his own companies not other countries.
Perhaps part of the US wakes up when things they buy now suddenly will cost double or triple the amount in 3 years time.
On the other hand, the excuse will be a perpetual state of war aggainst ever differing enemies and that will make it easier to swallow the doubled consumer prices.
Perhaps he’ll join his master Putin in attacking the ever evil EU.