I know it is not easy. By distancing yourself from your party, you risk incurring its wrath. With a man as resentful as Donald Trump, it is not just a risk, it is a certainty. But you no longer have a choice. Regardless of how close you felt to this president, you must now stop him, or at least slow him down, because…

Consider the 50% tariffs he now wants to impose on European imports. If this happens by 1 June, next week, it will not just be our industries, agriculture and economies that suffer. American consumers and your voters would also be affected, as they would see the prices of many goods rise, and your blue-collar workers, engineers and farmers would also be impacted, as would the entire American economy, who would face the retaliatory measures we would have to take. And I am telling you that we, the 450 million Europeans, would take them.

So I ask you: is this really the time to weaken ourselves, you and us, on both sides of the Atlantic, when you have such a challenge from China to face, when Vladimir Putin has plunged our continent back into war, and when we have so many investments to make in our defence?

Why should the allies which we must remain be condemned to such dangerous and pointless games? If your president changes his mind tomorrow — or has already done so — will this not further discredit the United States and the entire Atlantic Alliance?

Ask yourself for a moment why Vladimir Putin did not grab the lifeline Donald Trump was throwing him. He had won everything. The United States recognized that Crimea belonged to the Russian Federation, agreed to allow Russian troops to maintain control of Donbass, and prohibited NATO from entering Ukraine. Even before negotiations began, the world’s most powerful country had conceded everything to Russia, a second-rate power — and yet the Kremlin leader refused!

As unpleasant as it is obvious, the explanation is clear. Donald Trump’s improvisations, failures, and inconsistencies have already weakened Western democracies and undermined their alliance to such an extent that Vladimir Putin believes he need only wait to claim an even greater victory.

However, he is mistaken because, faced with an aggressive Russia and a passive America, Europe is waking up and rearming itself. Vladimir Putin is deluding himself into thinking he is already master of the continent, but for now, your president has succeeded in the dangerous feat of emboldening the man who dreams of rebuilding the Tsarist empire and is already gathering troops on the Finnish border.

You can no longer fail to see it. Donald Trump is making this century even more unstable than it has been since September 11, but is he at least managing to clip China’s wings? For your country, that is the big question. It was to distance it from China that your president tried so hard to get closer to Russia, but you know the result he has reached.

The executive orders have piled up. The walls of the Oval Office are still shaking from the threats made against Chinese imports, yet Xi Jinping and his regime have not blinked or backed down. In the end it is Donald Trump who has buried his wooden sword.

Not only has China won this trade battle, but it is also increasingly open about providing military support to the Kremlin. The Sino-Russian alliance is asserting itself on the world stage as if to proclaim the end of the Western era. And what is Donald Trump doing?

Is he tightening sanctions against Moscow? Is he calling a spade a spade and Vladimir Putin a dictator who threatens the whole of Europe? Is he urging America’s allies to close ranks within the Atlantic Alliance?

On the contrary, he keeps repeating that the European Union was created solely to harm the United States. He is expelling Venezuelans who thought they could find refuge in the land of freedom and he even wants to prevent Harvard from continuing to educate the world’s elites. Having failed on all fronts —Ukraine, China, Gaza, and international trade — he can find nothing better to do than attack Europe and Harvard, and you would do nothing?

Would you say nothing? Would the Republican members of the House and Senate not stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes? Would you allow your silence to associate you with the assassins of freedom? Be careful! Democracy is fragile and under threat everywhere. Do not let it be destroyed in the United States.

(Cover photo: © United States House of Representatives)