Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
This is an attack on Europe.
Why are tax dollars being spent for this? This is bullshit.
Isn’t this the shit they accuse Soros of?
You don’t understand. They say Soros uses his own money. Trump is using ours.
I don’t know why that’s better, but it seems to be.
I made a meme echoing the hypocrisy and double standards of the right. They’re asleep when billionaires fund apocalypse-accelerating movements but roar when it’s billionaires funding progressives.
And Russia
$4M is nothing. That’s like 50 bloggers in western Europe, or one regional rag with no readers. Or a Twitter troll farm in Hungary with 100 totally real humans and their handlers getting rich siphoning most of it off for themselves. A literal drop in the bucket.
The US has been funding foreign media for a century at least, steering narratives. It was part of their soft power strategy. This isn’t surprising. Where people are freaking out is due to the shift in alignment.
If Europe made a similar statement about bolstering left wing media in the US he’d go nuts accusing them of election interference.
They literally did this with a Canadian commercial airing a Raegan area
terrortariff statement and tried to blame us for interfering.Their kettle is charred.
Edit- Corrected spelling
That is actually a stroke of brilliance.
4 million is a lot of money, but it is also a pathetically low amount if you’re trying to make a dent in European politics
In fact, there are so many leftists in Europe -who would jump at the chance of publicly humiliating Trump- that I honestly believe you could raise 4 million just by starting some sort of kickstarter.
This is how those with the power have done it for ages and want it to remain. Scapegoat minorities and immigrants for all issues, make people angry, offer only hope of fix is to double down and be more harsh, austerity, sacrifice for country, etc, which gets more people fearful and go against what actually works better for healthy humanity, and for the dictatorship. Look at other current countries and in the past, and how maga has caused regression on human health and democracy measures. It’s a pattern visible if you’re awake.
Which is definitely why there should be laws in place that are enforced and respected to prevent this obviously depraved behavior.
Well SOMEBODY’s gotta use state funding to push facisim in Europe now that Orban’s out of office. /s
So they’re funding the right-wing…
Now if only people with 1/2 a brain cell could tell the difference between right wing propaganda and actual news; we’d be living in a way better world.
Laughable amount compared to what Russia is spending on disinformation outlets in the EU. I am pretty confident that they would fund mostly those that are already supported plentifully by Russia anyway.
They’re going to use that to grow lemmy.
Lol $4 million. Good luck getting literally anything done in that space with such a small amount.
like an iceberg, what you can see (the $4m) is just a tiny part.
