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Foreign leaders react as Donald Trump claims victory in 2024 U.S. election
With former President Donald Trump looking poised to reprise his role as the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military and largest economy — and with him wasting no time in claiming victory in Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election — leaders around the world started reacting Wednesday to the prospect of a second term in the White House for the businessman-turned politician.
From enthusiasm voiced by Israel’s leader as he wages an expanding, multi-front war to anxiety from some of America’s closest, generations-old European allies, the reaction to Trump’s election performance started rolling in long before the final votes were counted in some of the key battle ground states across the U.S.
Below is a look at how some foreign leaders and others around the world have taken the news of the American electorate’s apparent rebuke of Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party at the polls.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his congratulations to Trump on Wednesday, calling his election performance “history’s greatest comeback!”
“Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America,” Netanyahu said. “This is a huge victory!”
Despite Trump’s criticism of the Israeli leader’s handling of the ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Netanyahu was widely believed to favor the former U.S. leader in the U.S. election, as tension between Washington and Tel Aviv has risen sharply over the last year due to Israel’s tactics in its multi-front war with Iranian-backed groups in the Middle East.
The war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack that saw the militants kill some 1,200 people and kidnap about 250 others, has now killed more than 43,000 people in the Palestinian territory, according to its Hamas-run health ministry. Israel has also significantly ramped-up its assault on Hezbollah, Hamas’ fellow-Iranian backed allies in Lebanon. The Israeli offensive there has killed more than 3,000 people, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
The Biden administration has continued pushing for cease-fires on both fronts, to no avail, and demanding that Israel do more to mitigate the devastating impact of the wars on civilians.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely symbolic, also congratulated Trump on his “historic return to the White House.”
“You are a true and dear friend of Israel, and a champion of peace and cooperation in our region,” Herzog said. “I look forward to working with you to strengthen the ironclad bond between our peoples, to build a future of peace and security for the Middle East, and to uphold our shared values. On behalf of the Jewish and democratic State of Israel, and all our people, I wish you much success.”
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán
One of the first foreign leaders to offer congratulations to Trump on Wednesday was one of the very few who openly backed him long before the final votes were cast in the U.S. Hungary’s far-right President Viktor Orbán, who’s been accused during his decades-long leadership of the eastern European nation of eroding its democratic institutions by giving himself more power and limiting that of the country’s courts and civil society institutions, called Trump’s apparent success “a much needed victory for the World!”
In a message posted on social media, Orbán said Trump had pulled off “the biggest comeback in US political history,” and he congratulated him on his “enormous win.”
Orban has made himself an outsider among European Union leaders by endorsing anti-immigrant policies and maintaining close ties with President Vladimir Putin amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine — all while touting his close ties to Trump.
In a speech over the summer, Orbán suggested he had even helped to craft Trump’s future statecraft, claiming to have “entered the policy-writing system of President Donald Trump’s team,” with “deep involvement there.”
European Union leader Ursula von der Leyen
Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Union bloc’s governing body, the European Commission, congratulated Trump on Wednesday and iterated her hope in a brief social media post that the U.S. and EU could “work together on a strong transatlantic agenda that keeps delivering” for citizens on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
“I warmly congratulate Donald J. Trump. The EU and the US are more than just allies,” Von der Leyen said. “We are bound by a true partnership between our people, uniting 800 million citizens. So let’s work together on a strong transatlantic agenda that keeps delivering for them.”
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“Narco sub” carrying 8,000 pounds of cocaine intercepted in Pacific Ocean, Mexican Navy says
The Mexican Navy said Tuesday it has seized 3.6 tons (about 8,000 pounds) of cocaine aboard a “narco sub” off the Pacific coast which was spotted earlier this week about 153 miles off the resort of Acapulco.
Navy ships arrived to intercept the boat, which was carrying 102 packages filled with bricks of cocaine, authorities said in a news release.
The craft, of a type known as “go-fast boats,” was powered by two outboard motors and appeared to be a low-profile, semi-submersible craft — commonly known as a “narco sub” — designed to make detection more difficult.
Aboard the craft, the Navy detained nine crew members, six of whom were foreigners. The Navy did not specify their nationalities, but many of the boats found off Mexico have Colombian or Venezuelan crew members.
Officials released an image of numbered packages containing the cocaine flanked by two naval ships.
Cocaine is produced in South America and is usually shipped through the Pacific or the Caribbean to reach the U.S. market.
The seizure comes just weeks after the Mexican navy announced it had seized more than 8.3 tons of drugs in the Pacific Ocean, a record for a single operation at sea. The cargo was intercepted from six different vessels, including a “narco sub” that held about 4,800 pounds of narcotics.
The Navy said Tuesday that more than 15,000 kilograms of alleged drugs have been seized at sea under the current administration.
Earlier this year, Mexico’s Navy seized more than seven tons of suspected cocaine in two separate raids in the Pacific Ocean, and dramatic video captured the high-speed chases on the open sea.
In September, the U.S. Coast Guard said that it had offloaded more than $54 million worth of cocaine — including over 1,200 pounds of drugs that were seized from a “narco sub.”
Semi-submersibles, which cannot go fully underwater, are popular among international drug traffickers as they can sometimes elude detection by law enforcement. The vessels are sometimes seized in Colombian waters while heading to the United States, Central America and Europe. Earlier this summer, the Colombian Navy said it seized two “narco subs” off the country’s Pacific coast that together contained almost 5 tons of cocaine.
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