The more I see of the Donald Trump administration, the more I like its style.
Here’s a perfect example – in which Trump’s prospective new Ambassador to the European Union, Ted Malloch, tells it like it is in an interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC’s Daily Politics show.
Neil asked Malloch why on earth he’d want to be Ambassador to the EU.
AN: I mean you’re clearly not a great fan of Brussels or these bureaucrats like Juncker.
TM: Well, I had in a previous year a diplomatic post where I helped to bring down the Soviet Union, so maybe there’s another union that needs a little taming.
Later, Neil asked Malloch what he thought of the President of the EU Commission.
AN: What do you think of Mr Juncker?
TM: Well Mr Juncker was a very adequate mayor of some city in Luxembourg and maybe he should go back and do that again.
Neil laughed like a man who couldn’t believe his luck. Politicians are hardly ever this frank on TV politics shows. Diplomats even less so because supposedly it’s their job to be discreet, smooth things over, not ruffle feathers. As for the EU – no one of influence, with the exception of Nigel Farage, has ever talked about it so disparagingly on television.
Yet straight-talking, EU-despising Ted Malloch is the man President Trump has chosen to represent the US in the European Union. And the reason he did this is because, as Malloch was at no pains to hide, President Trump just doesn’t like the EU:
TM: He doesn’t like an organisation that is supranational, that is unelected where the bureaucrats run amok and that is not frankly a proper democracy.
There’s a revolution going on here and I think even those of us who support Trump and Brexit are being taken aback by the speed of change.
Remember that the European Union was partly the creation of the USA, which saw it as a way of keeping peace in Europe by using France as a counterweight to Germany, with a reluctant Britain as the sensible intermediary. This is why successive US Presidents have colluded to prop up this corrupt, inefficient, anti-democratic institution.
Suddenly, those days are over.
The EU is finished and the new President of the USA is actively speeding its end.