After Trump chooses Vance for VP, glee and caution as Europe reacts

LONDON − World leaders usually keep out of American presidential campaigns. That's because − like candidates or not − they have to work with the winner.

This week has been an exception.

Presidents and prime ministers globally rushed to condemn Saturday's assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsyulvania campaign rally.

New British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was "appalled by the shocking scenes" as Trump narrowly escaped death. China's President Xi Jinping expressed "compassion and sympathy" for Trump. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she was "following with apprehension" updates from the scene.

Trump's selection Monday of Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential pick was another moment when some in Europe let down their political guard, with reactions ranging from caution to elation.

More: Watch: Trump makes entrance at RNC with bandaged ear after assassination attempt

"A Trump-Vance administration sounds just right," Balazs Orbán, political director to Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán (no relation) wrote on social media Monday night. "Congratulations to @JDVance1 on being appointed by @realDonaldTrump as his running mate!" The Hungarian prime minister is a Trump ally and favorite of the American right wing.

Other European officials have fretted for months at the prospect of a second Trump presidency.

They fear Trump might reduce U.S. defense support for Europe. They worry about what a Trump restoration might mean for the defense of Ukraine, which relies on American resources, and more broadly for the so-called rules-based global order that's dominated world affairs since the end of World War II.

During his first presidency, allies were repeatedly on edge over what Trump might say or do, and the impact of his off-the-cuff words on global security, trade, and human rights.

More: Police officer encountered Trump shooter on roof before rampage, report says

Trump said in February he wouldn't defend NATO allies who didn't meet defense spending goals in the event of a Russian invasion. “No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling an unnamed European president during his time in office. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

That statement was "a bombshell in Europe," Camille Grand, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, wrote recently.

Vance, meanwhile, has been critical of Ukraine's goal of recovering all of the territory it's lost to Russia, calling it unattainable.

In Vance, Hungary's leadership appears to see a true partner. The Ohio senator, like Trump, has praised Orbán's anti-immigration stance, his crackdown on critics and his avowedly nationalist governing style.

"The closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with left-wing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán's approach in Hungary," Vance said in an interview in February.

'Quite a lot of fruity things'

Still, in the U.K., senior figures in the newly-elected Labour Party government quickly rejected on Tuesday comments made by Vance at a conference for U.S. conservatives last week.

"I have to beat up on the U.K. − just one additional thing," Vance said. "I was talking with a friend recently and we were talking about, you know, one of the big dangers in the world is nuclear proliferation, though, of course, the Biden administration doesn’t care about it. And I was talking about, what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon, and we were like, maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts, and then we sort of finally decided maybe it’s actually the U.K., since Labour just took over."

It may have been a joke. It didn't land. Not with Britain's government anyway.

'Change begins now': Britain's new premier, Keir Starmer, wins huge mandate to be 'boring'

It's also not fully clear why Vance described the U.K. as an "Islamist country." The Labour Party is broadly center-left in its political leanings. About 6% of the U.K. population is Muslim, similar percentage to Germany, and lower than in France and Sweden.

Angela Rayner, the U.K.'s deputy prime minister, told an interviewer she didn't "recognize that characterization," adding that Vance had said "quite a lot of fruity things in the past" − perhaps a reference to when the best-selling author of "Hillbilly Elegy" called Trump a "moral disaster" and "America's Hitler."

Rayner she looked forward to meeting Vance and Trump if they win in November.

"If that is the result," she stressed. "It's up to the American people to decide."

'Our closest ally outside of Europe'

To the anxiety and elation can be added: a growing sense of Trump-Vance inevitability.

In Germany, conservative lawmaker Peter Bayer said Tuesday that Vance was a "superb pick for Trump."

He said the "Trump-Vance tandem is what we Europeans and the world should accept as reality" if Democrats "fail to find a promising alternative" to President Joe Biden.

Bayer is a lawmaker for Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union, which governed from 2005 to 2021. Germany's current leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left Social Democrats, said last year that he found Vance's memoir, which launched his political career, "a very touching personal story of a young man who overcomes difficult circumstances."

When he first read "Hillbilly Elegy," Scholz said, it moved him to tears.

Bayer didn't go that far.

Vance, he said, will "reach the hearts and minds of the working class and those who felt, for one reason or another, neglected over the past years."

"I personally have full confidence," Bayer said, that American's voters, "will use the right to vote responsibly. It is clear to me that America will remain our closest ally outside of Europe."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facing Donald Trump - JD Vance ticket, Europe offers mixed reaction