From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday, February 18th.

One of the many ways that the U.S. and the world are grappling with actions and sensibilities

of the new Trump administration

is how Europe, much of Europe, has been shocked by what appears to them as J.D. Vance and Elon Musk,

basically telling Germans to be nicer to the Nazis. As the New York Times reports,

Musk has publicly endorsed the far-right alternative for

Germany party in this weekend's coming elections, telling party members last month that Germans

have, quote, too much of a focus on past guilt, unquote. The alternative for Germany party

denies any Nazi sympathies, we should say, but MSN reports that a 2019 survey, for example,

found that 15% of AFD supporters believed, quote, the Holocaust is propaganda of allied powers,

unquote, as opposed to just 2% of the whole German population.

And this past Friday, many of you have heard this, at the annual Munich Security Conference,

Vice President Vance stunned mainstream European leaders when he called for more openness to the

AFD party by saying things like this.

And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions,

and the conscience that guide your very own people.

Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together,

is one of our own making. If you're running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America

can do for you. And then he said this. While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we

can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's

important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own

defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe

...