With former President Donald Trump set 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 reality 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 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.
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.”
Russia’s Kremlin and a top parliamentarian
Leonid Slutsky, who heads the Committee on International Affairs in Russia’s State Duma, or parliament, was quoted Wednesday by the country’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency as saying a Trump victory offered “a chance for a more constructive approach to the Ukrainian conflict.”
“Trump was and remains a big businessman in big politics. Can we expect changes in approaches to the role of the U.S. in the Ukrainian conflict, which has been fueled by the Democratic administration since 2014? Judging by the election rhetoric (if it can still be believed), the Republican team is not going to send more and more American taxpayers’ money into the furnace of a proxy war against Russia,” Slutsky was quoted as saying. “Perhaps there is a chance for a more constructive approach here.”
Slutsky did not comment on Trump’s repeated vows to end the war in Ukraine quickly if reelected — something European and Ukrainian leaders fear he could do by halting America’s vast military support for Kyiv and forcing Ukraine to accept Russia’s takeover of significant Ukrainian territory.
Slutsky did predict, however, that if the next American administration does cut off that support, the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will fall “in a matter of months, if not days.”
There was no immediate reaction from President Vladimir Putin, who never spoke in favor of either candidate during the U.S. election campaign process, but whose leadership Trump has lauded previously.
In remarks later to journalists in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he was unaware of any plans for Putin to congratulate Trump directly, saying the former U.S. leader had made “quite harsh statements” about Russia during the campaign and calling the U.S. an “unfriendly country that is directly and indirectly involved in a war against our state.”
But he left room for any change in stance during Trump’s second term, saying: “After victory, preparing to enter the Oval Office, sometimes statements take on a different tone.”
“We will draw conclusions based on concrete steps and concrete words,” he said, adding that it would be “practically impossible” for Trump to damage U.S. relations with Moscow, as they’re “at their lowest point in history.”
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer did his best Wednesday, despite a clear delineation between his own policies and those expected of another Trump administration, to maintain the decorum of the storied “special friendship” between the two nations.
In a social media post, Starmer offered his congratulations to Trump “on your historic election victory,” adding that he looks forward to “working with you in the years ahead.”
“As the closest of allies, we stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of our shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise,” said Starmer, who came to power only months ago as Britain’s left-leaning Labour Party won national elections in a landslide after a decade and a half of Conservative Party rule.
“I know that the US-UK special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come,” added Starmer.
French President Emmanuel Macron
“Congratulations, President @realDonaldTrump,” France’s President Emmanuel Macron said in a brief statement posted on social media Wednesday. He declared his administration “ready to work together” again as it did during Trump’s first term in office, “with your convictions and mine. With respect and ambition. For more peace and prosperity.”
But an hour later, the French president issued another statement that hinted at the concerns he and many of his European colleagues are likely to share about Trump’s commitment to the transatlantic NATO alliance, America’s future backing of Ukraine in the war with Russia, and his stance on foreign import tariffs.
In his second tweet, Macron said he had just spoken with German Chancellor Olaf Sholz, and that the leaders of the EU’s two biggest economies had agreed to “work towards a more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context. By cooperating with the United States of America and defending our interests and our values.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte
“I just congratulated @realDonaldTrump on his election as President of the United States,” said NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday, adding in his social media post that Trump’s “leadership will again be key to keeping our Alliance strong. I look forward to working with him again to advance peace through strength through #NATO.”
Trump has criticized many of the NATO alliance’s European members for failing to commit at least 2% of their national GDPs to their defense budgets.
Trump shocked many of America’s closest allies during and after his first term by openly criticizing their funding commitments, and during the 2024 presidential campaign he said calling on allies to increase their defense spending would be a policy he aggressively pursued if reelected.
In May, Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “Trump got our allies to increase their NATO spending by demanding they pay up,” and that if reelected, “he will restore peace and rebuild American strength and deterrence on the world stage.”
Iran’s government
Fatemeh Mohajerani, a spokesperson for Iran’s ruling Islamic regime, appeared on the country’s state-run TV network IRIB Wednesday and was quoted as dismissing the potential impact of Trump’s election victory amid her country’s standoff with the West over its support for armed proxy groups across the Middle East and its nuclear program.
“The election of the U.S. President is not relevant to us,” she said according to a translation of her remarks on state media. She said the policies of both the U.S. and Iran were “fixed and do not change with the change of individuals,” and said there would be be no “impact on people’s livelihoods” in Iran regardless of who occupies the White House.
Iran’s economy has been decimated by a huge regime of U.S. and international sanctions imposed initially over its alleged nuclear weapons development — which the country denies — and extended over its support for U.S.-designated terror groups such as Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
During Donald Trump’s first term in office, he unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of an international nuclear pact negotiated by his predecessor that was intended to keep Iran’s atomic work in check in exchange for an easing of sanctions. He adopted a hard line instead, re-imposing sanctions to the consternation of America’s European allies who helped broker and co-signed the deal.
Iran has since ramped up its nuclear work, and there has been mounting concern this year that its backing for the so-called proxy groups across the Mideast could lead to a full-scale war with Israel, with the potential to draw in the U.S. as Israel’s closest ally.
Hamas and Palestinians react
Basem Naim, a long-time senior figure in the Hamas regime that ruled over the Palestinian Gaza Strip for almost two decades before the group sparked the ongoing war with Israel with its unprecedented terrorist attack more than a year ago, called Trump’s reelection, “a private matter for the Americans,” but said in a statement Wednesday that “Palestinians look forward to an immediate cessation of the aggression against our people, especially in Gaza, and look for assistance in achieving their legitimate rights of freedom, independence, and the establishment of their independent self sovereign state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
International diplomatic efforts toward a so-called “two-state solution,” which would see an independent state of Palestine created alongside Israel, have all but vanished amid the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
U.S. administrations from both sides of the political aisle have pushed for such a solution to the nearly seven-decade crisis in the heart of the Middle East, but with the current Israeli administration firmly opposed to the notion of Palestinian statehood, most Palestinians saw little reason for hope regardless of who won the U.S. election.
While nearly two-thirds of Israelis polled by the Israel Democracy Institute before election day in the U.S. said they believed Trump would be a better American leader for Israel’s interests, the sentiment in Gaza was less focused on who would win and more on surviving the war.
A woman living amid the rubble in Gaza told CBS News this week that they just want the bombs to stop falling, and many were doubtful that a change in U.S. leadership could precipitate that.
“For me, Republicans or Democrats are the same thing,” Gaza resident Firas Abu Firas said before election day. “They are two faces on the same coin.”
European Union’s 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.”
Italy’s Giorgia Meloni
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni congratulated Trump Wednesday, lauding what she called “unshakeable” ties between the U.S. and Italy.
“Italy and the United States are ‘sister’ nations, linked by an unshakeable alliance, common values and a historic friendship. It is a strategic bond which I am sure we will now strengthen even more,” Italy’s far-right leader wrote in a statement posted to social media.
Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan congratulated “my friend Donald Trump” Wednesday with a message posted on social media.
The leader of the sometimes contentious NATO ally, who’s taken a strong stance against Israel‘s handling of the ongoing wars with Hamas and Hezbollah, voiced his hope that “Turkey-US relations will strengthen, that regional and global crises and wars, especially the Palestinian issue and the Russia-Ukraine war, will come to an end.”
“I believe that more efforts will be made for a more just world,” said Erdogan. “I hope that the elections will be beneficial for our friendly and allied people in the United States and for all of humanity.”
Trump and Erdogan appeared to get along relatively well during the American’s first term in office.
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Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., and London.
