Nick Paton Walsh on Rubio Speech: Europe ‘Traumatized Over the Greenland Debacle’ but ‘Gleeful’ at His Tone

RUSH EXCERPT:

Walsh: “Yeah, I mean, look, this is an audience here traumatized over the Greenland debacle where America threatened military force against NATO territory controlled by Denmark. And so I think they were eagerly awaiting, anxiously awaiting to see the tone of Rubio‘s speech. And then very gleeful to greet the positive noises we heard from Marco Rubio twice hearing applause when the U.S. secretary of state evoked how America was Europe‘s child, and also how their fates would always be intertwined. But it‘s important to actually listen rather to the tone of Rubio‘s delivery and his constant evoking of shared culture and address the substance of what he essentially said, which is the values often espoused by Europe now and not where the United States wants to see them be. He consistently evoked christianity, the need for Europe to not have a shame of its heritage. It talked about the damage open borders had done, poor supply chains really constructing a vision of where Europe needed to be that‘s more compatible, frankly, with the far right populist opposition that we see here in Germany France, the United Kingdom, key European powers in attendance here, and the leaders are pushing a more sort of centrist liberal agenda at this particular conference. So I think much of the European audience will have been pleased to hear a senior Trump official say, we want to be your partners, we want to rebuild the world order, which he said was old and dead on his way here but you need to essentially get on board with our sense of values. He talks about how there‘s not really much point, discussing the details of defense spending. If you‘re not working out quite what it is you‘re trying to defend. And so I think it‘s a message that‘s designed to try and make Europe feel that the embers of that transatlantic relationship are something that could potentially be saved, it could be rekindled, but be in no doubt at all. He very clearly demands change from Europe as it is now talks about the United Nations being simply not fit for purpose. I paraphrase there but stark messages, definitely interlaced with a reminder of how in the past, the European U.S. relationship has indeed been better. Because he said, they shared those more, much”