Daily Caller
Here’s How Leaders From Around The World Responded To Trump’s Victory
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jake Smith
Following President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in the U.S. presidential elections on Tuesday, several leaders from countries around the world offered their responses — some more congratulatory in nature than others.
Trump made a historical comeback from his loss in 2020 and swept the electoral vote by at least a 277-224 margin, while also taking the popular vote by nearly five million votes, according to multiple reports. World leaders were closely watching the election — as Harris’ and Trump’s approach to foreign policy varies widely — and offered compliments on his victory, while other nations typically considered American adversaries seemed to take a more muted and cautionary tone.
“Italy and the United States are ‘sister’ nations, linked by an unshakable alliance, common values, and a historic friendship,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is a strategic bond, which I am sure we will now strengthen even further.”
“Congratulations on history’s greatest comeback!” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday.
“The future of the [South Korea]-U.S. alliance and America will shine brighter. Look forward to working closely with you,” South Korean Prime Minister Toon Suk Yeol said on Wednesday.
Other world leaders that Trump differs from vastly on politics — including Canada and the U.K. — also offered compliments to Trump on his win, even as Trump has publicly criticized their left-wing policies.
“I know President Trump and I will work together to create more opportunity, prosperity, and security for both of our nations,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Wednesday.
Most European Union (EU) nations applauded Trump’s victory, though some countries signaled that Europe needs to be ready to rely more closely on itself. Trump’s “America First” approach has been popular among swaths of the American electorate but has left some European countries nervous that Trump may take a different approach than President Joe Biden’s seemingly no-holds-barred relationship with Europe in recent years.
During his first term, Trump had a sometimes tense relationship with some European countries, as he felt that they contributed to the U.S.’ global trade imbalance and weren’t paying enough to be part of the NATO alliance. Trump on multiple occasions has threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO unless European countries pay their agreed share.
Trump’s threat was successful — a higher number of NATO allies met their defense spending goals at the end of his term than at the beginning.
“The European Union must stand close together and act in a united manner,” Scholz told reporters on Wednesday, noting that he and Macron were working closely with other European partners.
China offered few remarks on Trump’s win, while other adversaries such as Iran and North Korea have yet to publicly comment on the matter, although Tehran has made it clear it does not want another Trump term. Chinese officials have reportedly feared the policies of another Trump term compared to a Harris presidency and actively interfered in this year’s elections.
“We respect the choice of the American people and congratulate Mr. Trump on being elected as president of the United States,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Wednesday.
Russia’s message on the election appeared more veiled and hostile. Russian President Vladimir Putin does apparently not plan to offer any congratulations to Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters on Wednesday, arguing that the U.S. is “an unfriendly country that is both directly and indirectly involved in the war against our state.”
“We have repeatedly said that the U.S. is able to contribute to the end of this conflict. This cannot be done overnight, but… the U.S. is capable of changing the trajectory of its foreign policy. Will this happen, and if so, how … we will see after (the U.S. president’s inauguration in) January,” Peskov said.
Russia has waged war against Ukraine since 2022 and has dragged the U.S. and Europe deeper and deeper into the conflict. Biden has failed to significantly alter the course of the war; Trump has vowed that he could strike a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine by the time he reaches office in January.
Similarly, Trump has promised that the ongoing conflict in the Middle East — which was borne out of Hamas’ invasion on Oct. 7, 2023 — by the time he takes office in January, warning that he will treat Iran far more harshly than Biden has and will impose sanctions to ensure Tehran cannot build its funding reserves. Trump spoke to Netanyahu in July and reportedly told him that the war in Gaza needs to end by January, potentially in a bid to reestablish some norms between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
On China, Trump has promised fair competition but warned that he will impose stricter tariffs in a bid to balance the trade deficit, encourage Americans to buy more domestic goods and compel China to import more American products.
Daily Caller
Joe Rogan Tells Elon Musk He ‘Changed’ History By Buying Twitter, Calls Out Previous Government Interference
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
The popular podcast host thanked Musk for deciding to buy the company, noting how social media companies had coordinated with the government to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, impacting the 2020 election.
Podcast host Joe Rogan told billionaire Elon Musk on Monday that he “changed the course of history” by buying Twitter in 2022, recounting how the government had become intertwined with social media platforms.
In October 2022, Musk won a legal battle to become the sole owner of Twitter, now known as X, and promptly fired several top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust and safety. On “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the popular podcast host thanked Musk for deciding to buy the company, noting how social media companies had coordinated with the government to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, impacting the 2020 election.
“First of all, thank you. Thank you so much for buying Twitter. Thank you so much. I’m not exaggerating when I think you changed the course of history. I really do. I really think you made a fork in the road. We were headed down a path of censorship and of control of narratives that is unprecedented,” Rogan said.
“Forget about what they were able to do back when they had newspapers and the media under control. What they were doing with social media by suppressing information and when you had a combined government effort — like with what they were doing with the laptop story,” Rogan added. “We have 51 former intelligence agents saying that this is Russian disinformation, take it off offline, and Twitter complied. If you didn’t buy that we wouldn’t have known that. We had no idea.”
Musk explained how he became aware that the system on Twitter was changing, pointing out how former President Donald Trump was permanently banned from the platform after Jan. 6, despite calling on his supporters not to riot.
WATCH:
“The reason I bought [Twitter] was because I’m pretty attuned, since I was the most interacted with users on Twitter before the acquisition,” Musk said. “So before the acquisition I had more interactions then — like there’s some accounts like [former President Barack] Obama and whatever had a higher follower count — but I had the most number of interactions of any account in the system. So I was very attuned to like if they change the system, I can tell immediately. And I’m like, something weird is going on here, you know?”
“I just got increasingly uneasy and obviously when they de-platformed a sitting president, you know, de-platformed Trump — that was just insane. The things he was posting … he was posting good things. He was saying, ‘Hey, we do not riot, but don’t do any destruction of property, please stay calm.’ That’s the kind of stuff he was posting, and you’re like, ‘Uh, what’s wrong with that?’ Then some people said, ‘Oh, that’s like some sort of dog whistle, he means the opposite.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, so we’ll give you Trump’s account. Now you post what you think he should post because you can post nothing, he can ask people to calm down, like what? It was insane, it didn’t make any sense,” Musk said.
Following Musk’s acquisition of the company, the billionaire collaborated with independent journalists and authors like Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss and Michael Shellenberger to release the “Twitter Files,” which revealed that the company’s former executives justified banning Trump by citing the “context surrounding” the former president and his supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.”
After the interview with Musk was released Monday evening, Rogan announced on X that he endorsed Trump in his bid for the White House.
Daily Caller
‘He’s Willing To Hit Them Hard’: American Adversaries Pull Out The Stops To Derail Trump’s White House Bid
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jake Smith
Former President Donald Trump dealt with some American adversaries harshly during his first term, threatening them with military action and choking their economies. Now that Trump is on the verge of being reelected, those adversaries are panicking — and trying to prevent Trump from entering the White House.
Trump is in a dead-heat race against Vice President Kamala Harris in next Tuesday’s presidential elections. Nations making up the so-called “Axis of Evil” — especially Iran and China — have made it clear they do not want Trump to win. That’s borne in part out of anger against Trump for his actions during his first term and fear of what he will do in his second, according to a review of multiple reports.
It’s an open secret that Iran and China have attempted to interfere in elections in the past, as they are this year. Both countries have utilized a variety of methods to interfere with Trump’s bid for the White House. That’s particularly true for Iran, which has attempted to kill Trump and waged cyberwarfare operations against his campaign.
“While the Islamic Republic continues to mean what it says when it calls for ‘death to America,’ there is only one current presidential contender whom the regime and its terrorist network are trying to kill. That is Donald Trump,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, a scholar on Iranian affairs at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “That is born of a clear understanding in the regime’s mind that he is the candidate of real pressure.”
Trump’s approach to Iran — the largest state sponsor of terrorism and an accomplice in the killing of scores of U.S. troops over recent years — was described by his administration as a “maximum pressure” campaign. Trump withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal in 2018, arguing that it allowed Tehran to rake in billions of dollars under eased sanctions while failing to prevent it from building a nuclear weapon. He replaced the deal with harsh sanctions that cut off many of the country’s revenue streams.
“Trump demonstrated he’s willing to hit them hard. This isn’t the same approach we’re seeing from the current administration, which is why Iran’s focus remains on Trump,” former senior Pentagon official and Strauss Center fellow Simone Ledeen told the DCNF.
Iran’s network of terrorist groups suffered from a lack of funding as a result of Trump’s approach, but remained incredibly hostile to the U.S., launching multiple attacks on American forces in the Middle East in the following year. As attacks escalated, Trump made the decision to launch a drone strike and assassinate top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani while he was visiting Iraq in 2020.
Soleimani was a pivotal figure in the Iranian military, and his death greatly angered Tehran.
“The Soleimani strike… exposed some of Iran’s vulnerabilities,” Ledeen told the DCNF.
Iran has since staged multiple unsuccessful assassination attempts against Trump through various actors. The reports on the matter have seemed to escalate in recent months as the election draws close; U.S. intelligence officials briefed the Trump campaign in September on a previous assassination operation, which failed.
Iran has also carried out various cyberwarfare campaigns against Trump ahead of the election, some of which have been successful. Iranian-backed hackers gained access to internal Trump campaign documents — specifically regarding research about Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance — and leaked it to various media outlets and reporters in August and September, only some of whom published the material.
Iranian hackers also accessed and leaked a number of internal Trump campaign emails, which made their way into public reporting. The U.S. charged three Iranian operatives for the action in late September.
“If Trump is back, I’d expect Iran to ramp up its threats,” Ledeen told the DCNF. “Another Trump term would bring renewed pressure, and Iran’s leaders know that. They’ll likely grow more desperate and aggressive as they try to hold onto control in the region, but they’re not in the position they once were.”
If Trump wins, he’ll need to be ready to face down Tehran a second time — while making it clear his contention is not with the Iranian people, who have suffered under the authoritarian Islamic regime, Taleblu told the DCNF.
“While one of the strengths of former President Trump was his ability to keep the adversary guessing, I think it’s quite clear at a minimum a future Trump administration would return to a policy of maximum pressure, and begin to put meaningful and sustained pressure on oil and petrochemical exports and financial flows,” Taleblu told the DCNF.
“What a prospective Trump administration will need to be prepared for is how Tehran might be inclined to respond to pressure with pressure of its own,” Taleblu said. “And that’s why to offset escalation by the regime, as well as to do the moral and politically astute thing, Trump will need to pair maximum pressure against the regime with a real policy of maximum support for the Iranian people.”
The Trump campaign told the DCNF that Iran is “terrified” of a second Trump presidency.
“The terror regime in Iran loves the weakness and stupidity of Kamala Harris,” spokesman Steven Cheung said.
China has also been incredibly wary of a second Trump term, according to multiple reports. Chinese officials are reportedly fearful of Trump because he appears more unpredictable than Harris.
Publicly, Beijing refuses to say who it would rather deal with. But privately, officials were previously hoping that President Joe Biden would beat out Trump in the elections because they felt Biden was less of a threat, according to officials who spoke to The Wall Street Journal earlier in October .
When Biden dropped out of the race in July, officials shifted their preference to Harris, even though neither candidate is likely that favorable to Beijing, according to the WSJ. China has expressed ire to Republican and Democratic administrations over the years and has launched cyberattack operations against both parties.
But Trump’s strict policies in particular caused headaches for officials, and they may be expecting similar policies if he wins again.
“They know a lot about what Donald Trump’s approach to government, diplomacy, trade negotiations might be, and they know a lot about what he said through the entirety of the campaign,” Steve Yates, senior fellow at the America First Policy Institute, told the DCNF. “That is a challenge to them.”
Part of the fear among Chinese officials is that Trump will launch a second trade war if reelected. During his first term, Trump imposed heavy tariffs on China, significantly raising the tax on some incoming Chinese imports and deterring Americans from buying Chinese-made goods. Trump’s goal was to balance out the U.S.-China trade relationship and compel China to buy more American goods.
Trump has already publicly mused the idea of imposing 60% tariffs on Chinese goods if he wins back the White House, something Beijing is eager to avoid.
U.S. officials have said they’ve seen evidence of China trying to interfere in this year’s elections. It was reported last week that Chinese-backed hackers targeted data on Trump’s and Vance’s phones. It wasn’t clear what, if any, information was stolen, but it could be beneficial to Beijing if anything was taken. Members of Harris’ staff were also reportedly targeted.
A spokesperson from the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. claimed that Beijing was unaware of the hacking operation.
“We cannot comment [on] it… China firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms,” the spokesperson said. “We hope that the U.S. side will not make accusations against China in the election.”
A number of “bot” social media accounts linked to China have also been targeting Republican congressional candidates, according to a report released last week by Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center.
“While not always resulting in high levels of engagement, these efforts demonstrate China’s sustained attempts [to] influence U.S. politics across the board,” Clint Watts, general manager of the tech company’s agency, wrote in a post regarding the report.
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