The U.S. is even looking to Ukraine to help its operations against Iran — as Trump rages at Starmer and Sánchez for refusing to back his war.

Donald Trump’s German grandparents may have known the word for what some European officials now feel, as they watch him complain that America’s traditional allies have let him down: Schadenfreude.

Having spent a year criticizing, insulting and threatening European leaders, Trump now sees the value of having friends in strategically important places — if they have military assets he can use, anyway.

The hardening position of European leaders on Iran marks a watershed moment, just as U.S. President George W. Bush’s doomed and divisive invasion of Iraq in 2003 undermined transatlantic trust for years. The tensions over such a consequential new conflict in the Middle East may even prove existential for the Western alliance, after 12 months that had already strained U.S.-European relations to the breaking point.

    • Rakonat@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Replaced by a potato wrapped in tinfoil, which itself was replaced by a cheap acrylic Christmas ornament when someone thought the foil might be worth a penny.

    • lost_faith@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      There were, once upon a time, but a 5yr old had a slingshot and all the little stones they needed to shoot them out. He will never realize he did this to himself

    • zikzak025@lemmy.world
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      Well, he thinks his dad was born in Germany, but yes his grandparents were German. His grandfather was a draft dodger who fled Germany to move to the US. Seems like draft dodging is a family tradition.

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        12 hours ago

        Anyone fleeing the Hundred Years War shouldn’t be shamed as a draft-dodger. It was a straight-up series of wars of aggression, not of necessity. Any sane person would GTFO.

        Trump’s grandfatther was still a brothel-keeper, though.

      • ZiggyTheZygote@lemmy.ca
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        Hehehe although I’m sure he wouldn’t give a shit if his son fought and died, he would use his death for voter sympathy.

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      I’m German and I get where you’re coming from. His grandparents generation was guilty af.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        Keep in mind that Trump is so old that his grandparents would’ve been from a generation or two before the Nazis. (A quick web search says that his grandfather was born in 1869 and died in 1918, for example.) Is the German Empire what you were intending to criticize?

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          You mean the super conservative, etho-nationalist German Empire that also conducted the Herero and Nama genocide, keeping the survivors in concentration camps to use for slave labor and torturous race related medial experiments?

          Hitler didn’t convince the Nazi generation to suddenly be Nazis with his compelling oratory. He latched onto a deep rot which had already been present in that society for a long time.

          Sounds a little familiar for some reason.

          • MrVilliam@sh.itjust.works
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            1 day ago

            Something something make Germany great again.

            Not one of Hitler’s campaign slogans, but the phrase was featured in several speeches. It’s not clear to me whether Trump was ripping off Hitler or Reagan. And it’s neither here nor there but maybe Reagan was ripping off Hitler; idk and idc, he’s dead now and was an absolute monster either way.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          Yes. A lot of people fled the German Empire, it was nearly as bad as the Nazis. But the OP’s criticism applies to some people that stayed without ever getting any punishment. The people that fled were the victims.