Trump and Putin, behind the scenes

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Meanwhile, the EU has reckoned with the profound ill will of the Trump administration. The New York Times this week quoted an EU official who reported that Sondland told a dinner party that he hoped “to destroy the European Union.” In January, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a scathing account of the isolation of Trump’s ambassador among officials in Berlin. He had not made himself any better liked by the time I arrived in September...

The sources of Trump’s hostility toward the EU are not economic, and they are not strategic. At best, they might reveal how he has osmotically absorbed the ideology of the European far right. At worst, they might again display Trump’s subservience to Russian foreign policy. Breaking up the European Union into small, weak states that can be bullied serves Vladimir Putin’s interests—and all the more so if Russia can lever the U.S. away from its former friends altogether.

The U.S. Goes AWOL on Brexit - The Atlantic