Donald Trump, yesterday Monday, judged that Europe is “taking some bad directions”, days after Washington released a new, decidedly nationalistic, US “national security strategy”, a document in which he rails against European governments, particularly on the issue of immigration.

“Europe needs to pay close attention,” the US president told the press at the White House during an event to help farmers who are being hurt by tariffs. “Europe is taking some bad directions–it’s very bad, very bad for the people. We don’t want Europe to change so much,” he added, without clarifying what he meant.

Donald Trump’s digression was prompted by a question about the European Union’s millions of dollars fine on Elon Musk’s X platform, which the Republican called a “stinking” decision, adding that he would comment further after being fully briefed.

The man concerned, Mr Musk, claimed for his part that the EU should be “abolished”.

The Trump administration released a document on Friday setting out its new “national security strategy”, with decidedly nationalist content, in which it predicts that Europe is heading for “cultural erasure” if it does not fight “mass immigration”. “If current trends continue, the (European) continent will be unrecognisable in 20 years or less,” according to the text.

The Trump administration has lambasted, verbatim, EU decisions that it says “undermine political freedom and sovereignty”, “immigration policies that are transforming the continent and causing tensions”, “suppression of freedom of expression and repression of political opposition”, “falling birth rates”, and “loss of national identities”.

The relationship between the allies on both sides of the Atlantic has known tensions on several fronts since Donald Trump returned to power in January, including over the Republicans’ rapprochement with Russia and Washington’s open support for conservative and far-right parties in Europe.