Michał Kobosko, vice chair of the liberal group in the European Parliament, told PAP that U.S. President Donald Trump has introduced too much uncertainty and chaos during two years in office. In his view, Americans held him accountable for it in the congressional elections, in which Republicans suffered a defeat.
Kobosko said the preliminary results of the U.S. elections point to a crushing Democratic victory and an enormous defeat for President Donald Trump, who bears individual responsibility for the Republicans’ election result.
– Republican candidates could have bent over backward during their campaigns, but in the elections Americans passed judgment on President Trump’s administration, on its actions on the economy, the cost of living, and foreign policy, the war with Iran, and on the way he operates and speaks as president, said the member of the European Parliament, who is a former head of the Warsaw office of the American think tank the Atlantic Council.
– People don’t like chaos anywhere, let alone in the world’s largest democracy. The president of the United States should give Americans a sense of security and a sense that he is in control of what is happening, what he does, what he says, what he undertakes, said the politician from the Unia Centrum party (he entered the European Parliament in 2024 as a member of Poland 2050).
– Meanwhile, for nearly two years we have had a president (…) who doesn’t quite know what he is saying, who gets muddled in his testimony, who changes his mind from one day to the next, who keeps threatening individual countries or parts of the world, such as Europe, with new prohibitive tariffs. Sometimes he changes his mind, sometimes he imposes the tariffs, and then a week later he reverses them. That is introducing chaos and uncertainty among consumers, customers and citizens of the United States, Kobosko said.
He added that, from Europe’s perspective, an important aspect of recent weeks and months is that President Trump has begun openly supporting Vladimir Putin. – The diesel deal, as well as many of President Trump’s statements, indicate that he sympathizes in a way with the aggressor, with an international war criminal, which is what Vladimir Putin is, the PAP interviewee said.
Kobosko noted, however, that it is hard to predict whether Trump’s electoral defeat will change the U.S. approach to Russia’s war against Ukraine. – Congress has limited ability to influence the president here, said the vice chair of the liberals in the European Parliament.
He pointed out that even with the previous Congress, controlled by Republicans, Trump “did many things that he did not tell Congress about, did not warn it about, and did not consider it appropriate to consult with members of Congress about.” – We don’t know, and unfortunately we simply have to wait for the next moves, for the next phase of U.S.-Russia-Ukraine negotiations, announced for November 11, to see whether President Trump draws any conclusions, Kobosko said.
– In Europe, we are concerned about his pro-Russian, pro-Putin stance. We hope these elections will prompt him to some reflection. The United States cannot assist in any way an aggressor, a country that attacks its neighbor and that uses force to usurp the right to take over another country as its own property, added the MEP.
According to projections based on incomplete results of the midterm elections in the United States, Democrats have taken control of both chambers of Congress. U.S. President Donald Trump said he would accept the election results and congratulated the Democrats. At the same time, he declared that he would veto their proposals. Trump acknowledged that the war with Iran partly contributed to the Republicans’ loss.
From Brussels, Magdalena Cedro (PAP)
