President Donald Trump blasted Europe as "decaying" and "weak" on immigration and Ukraine in an interview published Tuesday, deepening a rift between the United States and some of its oldest allies.

Speaking to Politico, Trump also called on war-battered Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky to hold elections despite Russia's invasion and said that Moscow had the "upper hand."

Trump's comments doubled down on extraordinary criticism of top US partners in his administration's new national security strategy last week, which recycled far-right tropes about civilizational "erasure" in Europe.

"Most European nations, they’re decaying," Trump told Politico in the interview, conducted Monday.

The 79-year-old billionaire, whose political rise to power was built on inflammatory language about

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