Trump administration is funneling money to MAGA think tanks in Europe

Donald Trump's State Department is reportedly set to start funneling money into European "think tanks and charities," according to the Financial Times, in order to spread the administration's preferred MAGA values worldwide.

Sources who spoke to the Financial Times indicated that the plan was worked on during a recent trip to Europe by Sarah Rogers, a senior State Department official. During the trips, Rogers reportedly met with "influential right-wing think tanks" across Europe, and "discussed the establishment of a fund to promote American values with key figures from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party." Reform is the right-wing, anti-immigration party co-founded by Farage in the wake of the successful Brexit vote. Some of the likely initial targets of the efforts are London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels.

The sources further claimed that the plan is in some way tied to the forthcoming 250th anniversary of the U.S. this summer. Trump also recently cited that milestone when announcing his plan to shutter and renovate the Kennedy Center for two years, a process beginning on July 4.

The plan is also said to be driven by opposition to the efforts by several European nations to moderate content shared online, which are meant to curb instances of hate speech, but which the White House and the wider MAGA movement have decried as "censorship of free speech." Rogers, who serves as an Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department, had reportedly been in "extensive" contact with right-wing "free speech" activists in Europe prior to her joining the Trump administration.

Some of the specific programs in the administration's crosshairs include the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act, which it has characterized as "fundamentally anti-American regulatory schemes."

"The US administration has launched a crusade to save Europe. They have a real soft spot for the UK, but they believe it is under threat from dark forces spreading across the continent," a Reform UK source said about their discussions with Rogers.

News of this plan comes after the explosive leak of a set of documents in December, outlining the Trump administration's ambition to exert the president's vision of American values onto Europe.

"The explosive claim is made in the U.S. National Security Strategy, which notes Europe has economic problems, but says they are 'eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure' within the next 20 years," Politico's Laura Kayali wrote of the leaked plan. "That narrative is likely to resonate deeply among most of Europe's far-right parties, whose electoral programs are primarily based on criticism of the EU, demands for curbs on migration from Muslim-majority and non-European nations, and a patriotic push to overturn their countries' perceived declines."

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