Exclusive: Documents show German party’s scramble to request support after president’s 2016 election win and co-leader’s pursuit of Steve Bannon
A data leak from Germany’s far-right German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has revealed the extent of efforts by the party to court Donald Trump and other leading figures in the Maga movement, stretching back more than a decade.
The trove reveals the pains the AfD took in wooing the president, whom they saw from the beginning as a potential ally, with senior party officials agonising over the wording of an obsequious congratulatory telegram when he was elected in 2016, which included the wish that his “hopes as a person be fulfilled”.
Fox News and others have toed president’s line – seemingly hoping unrest abroad will make people vote Republican
Donald Trump sought to capitalize on the scenes of unrest in France, telling a crowd in Kansas on Monday that “migrants” and “communists” were responsible, and that the scenes were “what the radical ‘Dumocrats’ want to do to America”.
As Republicans struggle to convince voters across the country ahead of November’s midterm elections, Trump’s allies in the conservative media have followed suit, seemingly hoping that the scenes in France can scare people to the polls.
Europe’s leaders can no longer trust a word that comes out of Washington. No more slaps on the wrist – we need concrete steps to punish Trump
Historical comparisons are always inexact. No one conflict precisely mirrors another. Yet Donald Trump’s shameless appeasement of Vladimir Putin carries more than a noxious whiff of Neville Chamberlain’s failed attempt in Munich in 1938 to head off war with Nazi Germany. To be fair to the former UK prime minister – and history largely hasn’t been – his peacemaking efforts had the enthusiastic backing of most people in Britain and France who, like him, were desperate to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the first world war. Trump enjoys no equivalent public support for his treachery. Nor does he face the prospect of a US war with Russia. His betrayal of Ukraine is cynically self-interested, globally dangerous and utterly contemptible.
US-Russian talks on agreeing the shoddy terms of a precedent-setting American sell-out of Ukraine are at an advanced stage, after meetings in St Petersburg this week. Trump has zigzagged over the war ever since returning to office. Now, panicked by record-low poll ratings, he seems determined to scapegoat Ukraine and force its de facto capitulation. Recent steps – his shocking decision to fund Putin’s war machine by buying Russian diesel, his waiving of tougher sanctions, his mysterious, lethal interruptions in US satellite and intelligence sharing with Kyiv, and his renewed attempt to oust Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – mark Trump out as the skulking Judas, the craven Brutus of the modern age. He makes Chamberlain look like a man of iron principle. All that’s lacking is an umbrella.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator
French borrowing costs continued to rise on Thursday, as investors fret that France’s government is struggling to pass a federal budget after public protests gripped the country.
France’s bond market was hit with another bout of selling, with the difference between French and German 10-year borrowing costs – a metric for the risk premium attached to French debt – rising to its highest level in almost 15 years.
Steve Witkoff’s flattery of the Russian leader could be just the start of a mendacious stratagem from a US president who says Moscow ‘has been fine on Ukraine’
They say the first casualty of war is truth. For the Trump administration, the road to peace with Russia now encompasses some extraordinary lies.
Steve Witkoff delivered one as he sat down with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to close the deal on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine with the White House’s strategy of maximum pressure on Kyiv and saccharine flattery of the Kremlin.
Russia frees Stephen Hubbard after US request while Steve Witkoff praises Putin, wanted by ICC as war criminal, as a ‘humanitarian’
Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American man from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.
Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.
Advance warnings of missile attacks were seemingly suspended last week by the White House, but Ukraine’s president says: ‘Now it works’
The US has resumed sharing intelligence with Kyiv about Russian missile strikes, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday after a meeting with the US envoy Steve Witkoff in Norway.
He said Ukraine was again receiving advance warnings of ballistic missile attacks, which were seemingly suspended last week by the White House. “Now it works. It’s great,” he said, adding that the US move would save lives.
A handful of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump’s softening stance on Russia, threatening to pull financial support for his agenda over his “embarrassing” handling of the Ukraine war.
Don Bacon, an outgoing congressman in Nebraska, condemned Trump’s actions – which include a stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel and the pausing of sanctions on Moscow – as “absolutely disgraceful” and accused the US president of cozying up to a “war criminal” in Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.
As Republicans confront mounting political headwinds ahead of November’s midterm elections, Donald Trump is attempting to turn unrest in France into a cautionary tale for American voters, recasting the demonstrations that began as student protests against crumbling schools and the soaring cost of living as evidence of the dangers of immigration and the erosion of western civilization.
At a rally in Kansas on Monday evening, Trump described France as a once-great nation that had been “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists”.
More than 100,000 people from Ukraine and Sudan can stay in the United States without immediate risk of deportation, the Department of Homeland Security said, in what amounts to a temporary reprieve after their right to stay in the country was set to expire on Monday.
Temporary protected status was set to end on Monday for about 101,000 Ukrainians and 1,800 Sudanese. But the DHS said an announcement “will be made at the appropriate time”. Until then, the department said in a written statement, Ukrainians and Sudanese in the US covered by those temporary measures “retain protection”. The department did not indicate how long they could stay or when a final announcement would be made on their status.
Russia wants America and China to decide Ukraine’s future without Kyiv. Europe must challenge this dangerous return to diplomacy of the strong for the strong
Does Vladimir Putin know exactly how to play Donald Trump? The history of chummy phone calls, high-profile meetings and attempts to bring Russia in from the cold certainly suggests that Moscow’s thuggish ruler has a hold on this American president. If Mr Trump agrees to negotiate Ukraine’s future with Mr Putin and China’s Xi Jinping without Ukraine at the table, he will have handed the Russian leader a victory before talks begin. The message will be that strongmen are ruling the world and determining the fate of weaker nations.
Ukraine has the right to determine its future. That right cannot be waved away by a self-serving Russian proposal, however much it indulges Mr Trump’s belief that world affairs should be settled by powerful men. The scales are falling from European eyes. Trumpian America is raising doubts about whether it will help deter aggression or even honour its Nato commitments. If Washington now rewards Moscow and pressures Ukraine to accept a raw deal, it would be a betrayal. European governments would wonder where America might be in the future when their own security is threatened.
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Ukrainian president accuses Washington of ‘denial of reality’ in continuing row with Trump over apparent support for Moscow
Ukraine did not receive a warning from the US about an impending Russian missile attack on Sunday evening, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said, reviving concerns that Washington is withholding intelligence to bully Kyiv into capitulating to Moscow.
Yuri Ihnat, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian air force, said on television on Monday morning that Ukraine had not received a warning before a Russian missile barrage hit power plants in Kyiv at about 11pm. Earlier, a Ukrainian government official had told the Guardian the US had not warned the capital about the impending missile strike.
Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was asked by Sky News at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, if he felt he was being made a 'scapegoat' by his US counterpart, Donald Trump, for domestic problems including high diesel prices before midterm elections. Zelenskyy paused for 15 seconds, before he eventually smiled and said: 'This is my answer.'
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