Latest news with #pro-Donald
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Maga-styled parties given bloody nose in round of European elections
When The Telegraph sat down with Romania's far-Right candidate for the presidential elections, he proudly proclaimed that 'the wave of the Maga movement is here in Europe'. But on Monday morning, George Simion was licking his wounds after suffering defeat to a pro-EU centrist, with similar election results also filtering in from Portugal and Poland. On Sunday, three EU member states held crucial elections seen as a test for the political centre, with pro-Donald Trump, Right-wing candidates hoping to import his cut-throat style to the continent. But the tactic hasn't worked. In Romania, self-styled Maga (Make America Great Again) firebrand Mr Simion hoped to beat Nicușor Dan, the liberal pro-EU mayor of Bucharest, in the second round of the presidential elections. The vote was a rerun of the November presidential elections, which were annulled due to suspicions that Russia had influenced them in favour of pro-Putin candidate Călin Georgescu. In Poland, right-wing party Law and Justice [PiS], which was exceedingly close to Mr Trump during his first term in office, jostled for power with Civic Platform, Donald Tusk's ruling centrist party, for the role of president. And in Portugal, the hard-Right, anti-corruption Chega party was up against the Socialists and Democratic Alliance, the centre-Right ruling party. To the relief of EU leaders, and to the disappointment of the Trump camp, all three centrist candidates swept to victory in their respective polls - albeit by an extremely narrow margin in the case of Poland, where a run-off will be held. Mr Trump has long sought to boost the profile of far-Right, anti-EU populist movements in Europe, as he considers them natural political bedfellows. Like him, they feel that the centrist rulers of Europe are grossly complacent on hot-button issues such as mass-migration. Some share his more sympathetic view towards Vladimir Putin and Russia. The US president has also tried unsuccessfully to shift the odds in his favour in Greenland – where the centrist Democrats won by a landslide, apparently thanks to voters who oppose Mr Trump's desire to take over the territory. Likewise in Canada, the Trump administration-backed Conservative Party was trounced by Mark Carney – the anti-Trump liberal poster boy, and former governor of the Bank of England,. It is also no secret that Europe's current crop of centrist leaders, such as Emmanuel Macron, loathe populism: they view it as a con which offers, but cannot deliver, fast and easy solutions to complex problems. They will no doubt feel emboldened by this set of results, which counters the White House narrative that European countries are embracing Trumpian populism one by one. In future dealings with Mr Trump, they can bring up this set of results in response to suggestions that the centrists don't really have the democratic backing of the people. Some of Mr Trump's closest allies, including Elon Musk, the tech billionaire, aggressively campaigned on behalf of the far-Right populist Alternative for Germany [AfD] party during February's federal elections. The Trump administration's support was so brazen that JD Vance, the vice-president, snubbed a meeting with Olaf Scholz, the then chancellor, at the Munich Security Conference and instead paid a visit to Alice Weidel, the AfD leader. The gambit did not pay off, with Friedrich Merz's centre-Right Christian Democrats [CDU] instead emerging as the victor. Nor did it yield results on Sunday in the cases of Romania, Poland and Portugal. On Monday, it was Mr Merz's turn to send congratulations: 'Romania affirmed its commitment to a strong and secure Europe: Dear [Mr Dan] congratulations on your election victory!' he wrote in a Romanian language post on X. While the champagne corks might have been popping in Brussels on Monday, these results also carried a warning to the centrists: in Portugal, the far-Right Chega party secured its best-ever result with 22 per cent of the vote. It is likely to become the second largest party in parliament. That result mirrors the success of the AfD, now the de-facto opposition in the Bundestag, the German parliament, having won 20 per cent of the vote in February. Chega's success appears to be mainly drawn from railing against corruption, with leader André Ventura vowing to clean up Portuguese politics. Ironically, the party has had to expel or discipline members for being caught up in precisely the kind of sleaze scandals it opposes. One MP has already been kicked out of the party for stealing suitcases at airports, another member has been caught drink-driving, and a third has been charged with paying for oral sex from an underage teenager. None of this seems to have turned off pro-populist voters in Portugal, which is perhaps no surprise: Mr Trump himself has weathered countless sleaze scandals over the past nine years. In Poland, the results paint a much more mixed picture, even if the centrist candidate came in first place, as neither party won an outright majority. That means a run-off will be held in Poland on June 1, allowing Karol Nawrocki, the Right-wing PiS candidate, a chance at overtaking Rafał Trzaskowski, the centrist who is backed by Donald Tusk, the prime minister. 'Nawrocki's victory would undermine Tusk's political project and could be the harbinger of PiS' return to power in 2027 or even earlier in case of a snap election,' said Piotr Buras, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. 'In the medium term, disintegration of Tusk's coalition could be one of the consequences.' He added: 'The campaign in the next two weeks will be very polarising and brutal, a confrontation of two visions of Poland: pro-EU, liberal and progressive versus nationalist, Trumpist and conservative.' Back in Bucharest, however, Mr Simion does not seem too brutally disappointed by the results – and seems to view them as a temporary setback. 'We may have lost a battle, but we will certainly not lose the war,' he said on Monday morning, addressing his 94,000 followers on social media. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Pro-Trump media figures criticize White House's handling of Signalgate
Several routinely pro-Donald Trump figures pushed back this week on the White House's handling of the Signal scandal, calling it a 'shockingly egregious f*ck-up' and at least one urged the president to fire his national security adviser. British broadcaster Piers Morgan, conservative commentator Tomi Lahren, controversial MAGA ally Laura Loomer and Barstool Sports Founder Dave Portnoy all separately criticized the Trump administration's response after the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg revealed that he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat with top officials who discussed a military operation against Houthis in Yemen. 'This whole Signal-gate scandal is a shockingly egregious f*ck-up that could have had catastrophic repercussions for US forces in combat on that operation,' Morgan wrote on X. 'President Trump should roll some heads.' Morgan on his talk show 'Uncensored' said that after the Signal controversy, he would 'seriously dispute' that Waltz is up to the job of national security adviser. The talk show host has previously defended the president, including after he was found guilty on 34 felony counts in his hush money trial last May, which Morgan bashed as 'divisive and obviously politically partisan.' Loomer, a prominent MAGA voice online who traveled with the president to 9/11 memorial events in New York during the 2024 presidential campaign, had earlier questioned why the administration was using Signal in the first place. 'You don't use signal with people you are supposed to be talking to in your professional capacity. People use signal to hide conversations,' Loomer wrote on X. Commentator Tomi Lahren, a staunch Trump defender, said the administration needs to stop trying to 'wordsmith the hell outta this signal debacle,' which she said is making the situation worse — but added that no one needs to be fired. 'I'm honestly getting sick of the whatabout isms from my own side,' Lahren wrote on X, and later in a separate post, wrote, 'It was an F up. The first and most simple way to address it is just to acknowledge it was an F up. That's it.' The White House has repeatedly defended national security adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who found themselves at the epicenter of a scandal this week after The Atlantic published screenshots showing Waltz adding Goldberg to a Signal group chat with top U.S. officials discussing the military attack plans. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday declined to rule out the possibility that an official could lose their job over the leak when asked by reporters during a briefing. But Trump has expressed continued support for Waltz amid the fallout of the leak, calling the national security adviser a 'good man.' "I think it's all a witch hunt, that's all. I think it's a witch hunt," Trump told reporters in an Oval Office press conference on Wednesday. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Barstool Sports founder and online influencer David Portnoy, who frequently supports the president's policies, posted a video directly calling on Trump to dole out consequences to the officials involved in the scandal. 'Trump, you may love Michael Waltz. You love Pete Hegseth — you may love these guys,' Portnoy said. 'Somebody has to go down. To me, that's Michael Waltz.' He went on to say: "You can't have the top of the top security people in the United States with the most sensitive information in the world adding random editors of a magazine that hates Trump's guts to a group chat talking about an attack before it happens on a terrorist group.' Portnoy's rare rebuke of the president registered quickly with Democrats. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) highlighted Portnoy's criticism, reposting his video with the comment: 'Dave Portnoy knows you can't share classified war plans in a Signal chat — yet somehow, the Trump administration's top national security leaders don't."
