The State Department Plan to Fund Europe’s Right Is a Mistake

By John Gustavsson

Sunday, September 13, 2026

 

According to recent reports, the U.S. State Department plans to spend at least $25 million on civil-society groups in Europe, including $4 million to support European conservative media outlets and journalists focused on issues of free speech, sovereignty, and migration. For a European conservative writer like me, this sounds like a potential windfall. Even so, I think it’s a terrible idea that will hurt the very cause it aspires to help.

 

And that’s not because of some misguided sense of fairness toward our political opponents. The European Commission is already pouring millions of euros into projects designed to counter anti-migration politics. On paper, the State Department plan would merely help level the playing field. Knowing the Trump administration, however, the funding is not intended to support mainstream European conservatives or even national conservatives generally, but only those Trump-aligned voices willing to join the ever-shrinking choir of Europeans singing the president’s praises.

 

And it really is shrinking. While Donald Trump was never popular with the average European, he amassed a not-insignificant fan club during his first term. Many national conservative and even mainstream conservative figures copied his rhetoric (“make X great again,” “deep state,” etc.) and positively contrasted his toughness with the sclerosis of the EU.

 

Now, all that is gone. The first blow was the “liberation day” tariffs, which made it clear that Trump viewed Europe as an adversary first and foremost. Most European conservatives agreed with Trump’s criticism of the continent’s pitiful defense spending and its dependence on Russian gas, but none accepted the narrative that Europe had fleeced America on trade.

 

The second — and harder — blow was Greenland. While Americans may have forgotten that their president attempted to bully his way into expanding U.S. territory earlier this year, Europeans have not. National conservative leaders across Europe rushed to distance themselves from Trump. In Denmark, backlash against Trump arguably cost the right this year’s general election. As a Swede currently campaigning for another four years of right-wing governance, I am asked more frequently by voters where my party, the Sweden Democrats, stands on Trump than in prior election cycles.

 

After the tariffs and Greenland, most of Trump’s remaining European supporters clung to the idea that “at least he hasn’t started any wars.” Then, the U.S. and Israel teamed up to attack Iran. Afterward, the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, a development that affected Europe far more than America.

 

The polling is brutal: In Sweden, only 4 percent of voters now have a favorable view of Trump, a level of support that pollsters refer to as the “lizardman’s constant.” For comparison, support for the national conservative Sweden Democrats sits at around 20 percent.

 

Things aren’t much better in the rest of Europe. In July, Trump’s favorability in neighboring Denmark was only 3 percent. Just 9 percent of Italians and Germans and 12 percent of Spaniards and Brits have a favorable view of the president.

 

None of this is to say that the State Department won’t find people willing to take its money. In addition to Trump’s remaining troupe of eccentric cheerleaders, Europe, much like America, will always have grifters willing to promote anything in exchange for a paycheck. But, as in America, these kinds of people are limited in their ability to connect with ordinary people and build support for their causes. They are, however, capable of poisoning the discourse by using American money to buy their way into spaces currently occupied by other right-wing media outlets and personalities.

 

Worse, the entire European right risks being tarnished by association: The European Union was founded in large part to reassert Europe as an independent geopolitical player rather than a bloc to be carved up by the United States and the Soviet Union. While the EU was moderately successful in achieving that mission, its creation reflected a fear of foreign influence and manipulation among Europeans.

 

Those who take money from the U.S. government will be distrusted and dismissed as mere propaganda organs and foreign agents, as will nearly everyone else in the right-wing media ecosystem. Because the State Department need not publish a full list of grantees, almost anyone on the right will be worthy of suspicion. Right-wing voices, who often use the left’s lack of patriotism as a political weapon, may well find their own patriotism questioned.

 

Trump may not care if his paid-off European influencers grow at the expense of the mainstream or even national conservative right. He may care, however, that this initiative is also all but certain to make the European right far more anti-Trump than it currently is: Any somewhat prominent conservative European writer, pundit, or influencer will fall over himself to condemn Trump to prove that he is not on the State Department payroll.

 

For the EU, news of the State Department’s funding spree will come as an early Christmas present. For years, the EU has expanded censorship measures in the name of combating disinformation and foreign interference, often targeting anti-immigration views. Opposition to this censorship, and right-wing momentum more broadly, have both grown noticeably within the union since earlier this year, when conservative groups in the European Parliament finally united to pass migration legislation. Trump’s cash infusion will only incite another round of mass hysteria, allowing Brussels to regain momentum and push through even more censorship.

 

Unlike Radio Free Europe, which targeted the communist world during the Cold War, the State Department initiative would target countries that already have established opposition parties and — unbeknownst to many Americans — a thriving conservative media ecosystem. Even 20 years ago, before the Sweden Democrats had won any seats in Parliament, the party dominated the Swedish blogosphere, with prominent alternative media outlets causing a stir by supporting it. In Britain, daily newspapers such as the Daily Express and the Daily Mail are a constant thorn in the side of the political establishment. Even Ireland now has Gript, its own dissident media outlet.

 

In short, the initiative would not fill a vacuum. At best, it would fund eccentrics and grifters who would dilute the right’s political messaging and distract from its more credible figures. At worst, it would tarnish conservative voices across the continent as foreign pawns in thrall to the one person whom Europeans on both the left and right view with equal disdain.

 

The European right and its media do not need an American stipend. Rather, the American and European right should engage in organic exchange — trading writers, readers, and, most important, arguments to expand their reach and deepen their understanding of one another. Washington does not need to fund the conversation. It needs to join it.