President Donald Trump has warned Americans the US does not want to ‘end up like Europe’, telling citizens they should ‘spend less time worrying about’ Vladimir Putin
Donald Trump calls Zelenskyy ‘disrespectful’ during meeting
President Donald Trump has launched a new attack on Europe, listing four things Americans should be more concerned about than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
In a post on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said Americans “should spend less time worrying about Putin”. The White House incumbent then said the US has more pressing concerns such “migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country”. This, the president insisted, is so “we don’t end up like Europe”.
The idea that countries are emptying “mental institutions” and asylums have long been part of Trump’s rhetoric on immigration. In 2023, Trump told the National Rifle Association (NRA) he “read a story” about a man “who takes care of a large segment of people in a mental institution in a South American country” saying he had nothing to do because “all of our patients have been released into the United States of America”.
In February last year, Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that “we have millions and millions of people and they came from prisons and jails. They came from mental institutions, and [were] insane.”
Trump had previously referenced this story in a speech in New Hampshire. A CNN fact check from 2023 said Trump’s campaign “was unable to provide any evidence of the existence of a news story about a no-longer-busy doctor at a South American mental institution”.
The fact check said: “The campaign also failed to provide any evidence that South American countries are emptying mental health facilities to somehow send patients into the US. Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told us they had not heard of anything that would corroborate any of Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration.”
It isn’t the first time Trump has been at odds with Europe over the last week, following an extraordinary row with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office which prompted a barrage of supportive messages from European leaders who convened at a conference held by Sir Keir Starmer in London yesterday.
Trump accused Zelensky of “gambling with world war three” and said he had not expressed enough thanks for US aid in defending his country against Mr Putin’s invasion. Sir Keir, meanwhile, told European powers they must realise it is “time to act”, and warned they stand at a “crossroads in history”, following the Sunday gathering at Lancaster House, a mansion near Buckingham Palace.
He is expected to return to the Commons on Monday for the first time since his blitz of high-stakes diplomatic action across the Atlantic and in London. MPs will likely hear a statement from the PM following his meeting with Trump in Washington DC, as well as the emergency defence summit yesterday.
He committed £1.6 billion towards helping Ukraine purchase 5,000 missiles for its defence and invited European leaders to join a “coalition of the willing” led by Britain and France, which is aimed at enforcing any future peace deal.
America is attempting to negotiate an end to hostilities directly with Russia but Sir Keir has insisted European countries must play a key role in enforcing a peace deal and deter Putin from breaking it.
