At first amused that he was running and now horrified at the nomination, many Europeans are keeping their fingers crossed that Donald Trump does not win the U.S. presidential election.
(Editor’s note: Lynn Strongin Dodds, a London-based contributor to FTF News, shares her views of the Trump phenomenon. Dodds has dual citizenship in the U.S. and the U.K.)
Although the U.K. is in the throes of the European Union referendum debate, there is also incredulity that Donald Trump has clinched the Republican nomination. It was only a year ago that the country’s bookmakers were betting odds of 66/1 for him to become the nominee and 150/1 to reach the Oval Office.
Today, some bookies put his chances of moving into the White House at 15/8, suggesting he has a 35 percent chance of winning the presidency while others give him a 2/1 shot, putting fear into the hearts and minds of many Europeans.
Trump’s populist foreign policy and slogan of putting “American First” has more than a whiff of déjà vu and conjures up memories of the 1930’s when the pressure group, The America First Committee, opposed U.S. military intervention against fascism in World War II.
The outcome is well known and the committee disbanded shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.
Most Europeans do not want to turn back the clock and are horrified at Trump’s outrageous foreign policy views such as promoting a no-holds-barred violence, including torture, against enemies in the Middle East, and threats to withdraw from N.A.T.O.
They are also less likely to want to travel to a country that places a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., builds a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border or encourages Japan and South Korea to consider building nuclear weapons to ease the burden on the US to defend them from North Korea.
Many of the views have been encapsulated in the press and commentaries from politicians to celebrities.
Over the past few months, Germany’s Der Spiegel called Trump the most dangerous man in the world while U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron said his plan to ban Muslims is divisive and unhelpful. Meanwhile, the French liberal newspaper Liberation has described him as a nightmare turned reality, and J.K. Rowling tweeted that he’s worse than Voldemort. A recent cover for The Economist has a picture of Trump dressed as Uncle Sam with just one word, “Really?”
However, Trump does have his admirers on the hard right wing and there are there are echoes of his views in the nationalist parties of Britain, Denmark, Netherlands, Greece and France. They have all tapped into the dissatisfaction with the status quo, the disenfranchisement felt by middle- and working-class people from the existing political establishment and a general view that politicians are not honest with voters. Luckily, they are the minority — for now.
Although Europeans will continue to express their horror at the prospect of President Trump and will be rooting for Hillary Clinton on the sidelines, history also tells us that foreign opinion will make little difference to the U.S. voting public.
In 2004, Europeans assumed that their own well-publicized opposition to President Bush’s Iraq war would hold sway and make it harder for him to get re-elected. In fact, anti-Americanism had the opposite effect. It created a fortress mentality and American supporters rallied round the President.
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