“I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic” — this is how US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described the continent in what should have been a confidential group chat made up of the Trump administration’s national security heavyweights.
The contents of the chat — which included US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser — were leaked by the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who found himself added to the discussion, likely by accident.
In the chat, which the US National Security Council said “appears to be authentic”, the group discussed planned strikes on Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, which commenced hours later.
Aside from top-secret operational information on strikes, the chat also laid bare US disdain for Europe, which Vance first articulated during his speech at the Munich Security Conference.
In the leaked conversation conducted on the Signal app, unauthorised for classified official conversations, Vance said how much he hated “bailing Europe again”, claiming that the strikes on Houthis and the subsequent unblocking of trade routes would benefit Europe most.
“Three per cent of US trade runs through the Suez. 40% of European trade does. There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” the US vice president said at the start of the discussion.
“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance continued, arguing that strikes on Houthis should be delayed for a month.
Later in the conversation, Waltz criticised the limited capabilities of European navies.
“It will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes. Per the president’s request we are working with DOD and State to determine how to compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans,” Trump’s national security advisor said.
Hegseth responded, saying, “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic.”
Other officials added that the US should clearly state to Egypt and Europe “what we expect in return”. An account claiming to be White House Chief of Staff Steve Miller commented, “We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. For example, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what?”
‘Trying to pick a fight’
The US vice president first stunned European leaders at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February, where he claimed Europe should be scared of the “enemy from within” and launched a blistering criticism of the continent’s media censorship laws.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Vance was “trying to pick a fight” with Europe after his speech in Munich.
“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to a pick a fight with our friends,” Kallas said at the time.
Vance also courted controversy early in March when he described the UK and France as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years” in the context of Ukraine ceasefire negotiations, despite both countries having fought alongside the US in Afghanistan.
Hegseth’s comments align with other public remarks the defence secretary has made about the US unfairly supporting Europe, such as his words in February that Washington “no longer tolerates an imbalanced relationship” with its allies.
Trump has taken a tough stance against Europe even before being re-elected to the White House. The US president has accused the European Union of taking advantage of the US and threatened to slap 200% tariffs on alcohol made on the continent in an ongoing trade war.
He has also riled European allies by claiming the US should take over Greenland, a territory of EU member Denmark, and appearing to adopt the Kremlin’s rhetoric on Russia’s war in Ukraine in a much-publicised spat with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the Oval Office.
[euronews]
