Anthony Gardner, former U.S. ambassador to the EU, tells Channel 4 News:

“It’s time for European leaders including [British prime minister] Starmer to realize that this administration actually wants to destroy the European Union. And that sounds pretty — some people will think that’s pretty exaggerated, but it’s not. I think that’s actually what’s going on and I think the UK has a fundamental interest in ensuring that the EU remains strong.”

Consider the multiple lines of attack and the interests directed at the Trump administration objective.

J.D. Vance goes to Munich to condescendingly lecture Europeans about the meaning of democracy — as though Europeans had minor roles in defeating 20th century fascism and unwinding Soviet totalitarianism.

Trump and Vance then ‘host’ Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House while parroting Kremlin talking points and spewing their contempt for Ukraine’s president and its people.

And all the while, the Silicon Valley oligarchs salivate at the tantalizing prospect of the collapse of their regulatory nemesis, the European Union.

The Hill reported on January 23:

President Trump criticized the European Union (EU) on Wednesday for levying hefty fines against the world’s biggest tech firms, calling it a “form of taxation” against American companies.

“They won $15 or $16 billion from Apple. They won billions from Google. I think they’re after Facebook for billions and billions,” Trump said during a virtual appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“These are American companies,” he continued. “Whether you like them or not, they’re American companies, and they shouldn’t be doing that. That’s, as far as I’m concerned, it’s a form of taxation. So, we have some very big complaints with the EU.”

The EU’s top court ruled in September that Apple owed 13 billion euros, or more than $14 billion, in back taxes to Ireland. The same day, the court also upheld a 2.4 billion euro, or $2.7 billion, fine against Google by EU antitrust regulators.

Contrary to Trump’s claim that these fines are a form of taxation penalizing American companies, they are in fact legal remedies designed to constrain the rapacious drive of corporations which maximize their profits at the expense of the populations upon whom they prey.

The golden age for which Trump and Vance pine and which they promise to revive is one in which there were no antitrust laws and America was ruled by robber barons.

The goal is to strip governments of their powers and thereby take away the rights of the citizens those governments were elected to represent. That power will then be placed in the hands of men who have a closer affinity with machines and money than they have with the rest of humanity.