The EU signs its own death warrant as Donald Trump fights for Elon Musk with 17.4 million Britons – Lee Cohen

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The bloc’s latest disgraceful move against Elon Musk’s X only vindicates Brexit, writes US columnist Lee Cohen

As an American who always championed a strong Britain, independent of the EU’s tyranny, the bloc’s latest disgraceful move against Elon Musk’s X only reinforces my robust Brexit enthusiasm.

Last week, Brussels slammed X with a €120 million fine under the Digital Services Act for the supposed crime of not censoring fast enough or fervently enough.

Translation: the platform dared to let Brexit supporters, Trump voters, climate sceptics, and ordinary British patriots speak without first begging permission from a Eurocrat in Brussels.

Elon Musk has become the 21st-century equivalent of the Boston harbour tea-dumper: a private citizen who refuses to bow when bureaucrats demand he silence voices they dislike.

The EU’s real grievance is not “hate speech” or “disinformation”; it is that X, uniquely among the big platforms, still hosts the kind of robust, rowdy, sometimes outrageous conversation that used to be the birthright of every Englishman in the pub — before the BBC decided only licensed opinions were permissible — and every American on the soapbox. Brussels cannot abide the existence of a space it does not fully control.

And here is where the transatlantic bond — the real Special Relationship, not the polite diplomatic charade — comes alive. Donald

Trump, now the 47th President, has already made it clear that attempts to throttle American tech companies will be treated as acts of economic warfare. His administration’s swift response? Sanctions on the table, tariffs in the pipeline, and a very cold wind already blowing.

Just days ago, in a blistering Politico interview, Trump eviscerated the EU’s overlords as “weak” relics presiding over “decaying” nations — crippled by a migration disaster that has seen over a million Channel crossings since 2018, while they let Ukraine bleed out in a war they “talk” about but refuse to end.

The EU signs its own death warrant as Donald Trump fights for Elon Musk with 17.4 million Britons – Lee Cohen

“They want to be so politically correct, and it makes them weak,” he thundered, praising border hawks like Hungary and Poland as rare bright spots in a continent hurtling toward “civilisational erasure”, according to his new National Security Strategy.

Vice President JD Vance called the fine “an attack on free speech itself,” and Musk reposted the sentiment with a curt “much appreciated”.

When the EU tries to silence an American platform used by millions of Britons, it is not merely attacking Musk; it is attacking the shared Anglo-American tradition of free speech that both our nations have defended, often alone, against the tyrannies of the age.

Meanwhile, Labour offers little more than the familiar cringe of “constructive engagement”. Even as Trump exposes Europe’s frailty,

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper musters the gall to claim the continent brims with “strength” — citing defence spending and Ukraine aid, as if that isn’t just more Brussels begging for American scraps.

One struggles to imagine Margaret Thatcher responding to a foreign power fining British newspapers with a polite request for “dialogue.”

Yet that is precisely the posture of a Labour Party that spent years trying to reverse Brexit and now seems almost relieved to let Brussels do its dirty work.

While they dither, Reform UK — the true heirs to Brexit’s spirit — stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Musk in the fight for free speech.

Let Brussels rage. Let it fine, threaten, and lecture. Every time it does, another thousand Britons who vaguely regretted Brexit in 2019 will remember why they voted Leave in the first place. And every time it does, another million Americans will cheer the island that had the guts to walk away first.

Mr President, the tariffs cannot come fast enough. Britain stood alone once before. This time, she has a rather large friend on the other side of the Atlantic who owes her a debt of gratitude — and is eager to repay it.

God bless the Transatlantic bond — and may Brussels finally discover what happens when it picks a fight with two nations that invented liberty, still believe in it with every fibre, and now have the muscle, the will, and the leadership to defend it without apology.

The sooner similar-minded voices return to power in Britain, the louder that lesson will echo.