Anne Applebaum writes:

At a dinner in Athens in March, Kimberly Guilfoyle, then the U.S. ambassador to Greece, made a statement that elegantly combined arrogance with menace. According to The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, Guilfoyle referred to the troubles of Romania’s governing coalition and, with Greek politicians in the room, took credit for its impending collapse: “We can do that to any country we want,” she said. “We can do that here.”

Guilfoyle was subsequently disgraced for a different reason: The Journal also obtained screenshots of messages she had sent to a Republican donor, asking him to deposit $100,000 in her American Express account. She and her lawyer denied everything, including the dinner conversation, but the screenshots were too much even for the Trump administration. She resigned.

If Americans were more exercised by her apparent greed, Europeans were appalled by her political boasts. Guilfoyle did seem to think she could influence the coalition politics of democratically elected European governments, all of them U.S. allies and members of NATO. More to the point, she isn’t the only Trump-administration official who has tried to do exactly that.

Americans once promoted democracy in Europe as a political system, and under that general understanding accepted all elected politicians of the center-left and center-right as legitimate. This administration and its adjacent business elite are now pursuing a different policy. In some cases, they promote the interests of parties that they believe to be ideologically aligned with the MAGA movement, including some that are openly pro-Russian. Other European political figures seem to have gained Washington’s blessing (or are trying to gain it) because they can promote commercial interests favored by someone close to the administration. In at least three cases, Americans have reportedly tried to persuade elected European leaders to dump their current coalition partners in favor of new ones more to the White House’s liking.

The clearest case is in Poland. I am married to Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, whose political party is the largest member of the current ruling coalition. But I am not revealing any special information; Polish media, including far-right media, have widely reported that President Trump strongly hinted to the leader of one of the coalition’s two other parties that he should switch sides. [Continue reading…]