A European View of Trump’s First Month
Zanny Minton Beddoes / Editor-in-chief of The Economist

(February 20,, 2025) — I have been a journalist for three decades and in that time I’ve experienced very few weeks as head-spinning as this one. The 9/11 attacks, certain moments in the global financial crisis and the early stages of the Covid Pandemic are some of the rare instances where the world seemed to change fundamentally in a matter of days.

To those of us in Europe the geopolitical shifts of this week seem similarly monumental. President Donald Trump appears to be abandoning Ukraine, turning his back on the transatlantic alliance that has endured since the Second World War, and buying wholesale into Vladimir Putin’s talking points.

At last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, where America’s public tone towards its European allies shifted towards outright hostility, I felt as if I had a front-row seat as history was being made. Events since then have moved quickly on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, there has been panic as the continent’s leaders contemplate that the country, which created the NATO alliance now seems prepared to smash it.

In America, meanwhile, as Mr. Trump completes the first month of his presidency, he continues apace to push the boundaries of his own power. To reflect these momentous events we, very unusually, have two different covers this week that feature Mr. Trump.

In Europe, our designers have placed Mr. Trump at the head of a long, Putinesque table, conferring with Russia’s president. You will notice the empty seats—this is where someone like Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, might have been sitting had he not been shut out of initial talks by Mr. Trump.

A war of words between the pair is escalating. Under Mr. Trump, Ukraine is being betrayed, Russia is being rehabilitated and America can no longer be counted on to come to Europe’s aid in wartime. The implications for Europe’s security are grave, but, as our leader argues, they have yet to sink in with the continent’s leaders and people.

Our cover elsewhere features Mr. Trump bedecked with a crown. Since returning to office he has made his base exultant and left his opponents reeling. The president says he is clearing out waste, fraud and abuse. His opponents warn he is frogmarching the country into a constitutional crisis, or even a Trumpian autocracy.

Our leader and accompanying Briefing assess Mr. Trump’s first month with calm fact-based analysis and a careful look at history. The president is entitled to set new goals for the bureaucracy.

Mr. Trump is hardly the first man in the Oval Office with maximalist ambitions. And he is still far from overturning America’s constitutional order. But the way Mr. Trump is going about his goals—at times with wanton cruelty—is dangerous and wrong. And Mr. Trump, being who he is, will contemplate any extreme. Get ready for a titanic struggle.