The Trump Administration is said to have pressured allies to withdraw from a conference on disinformation, disturbed by criticism towards the USA. Romania is among the countries targeted by Washington’s initiative.
The Trump administration has exerted pressure on diplomatic officials from the EU, Canada, and Lithuania to withdraw from an international conference on disinformation, after the organizers announced sessions warning about the threat posed by American government officials and, generally, by the influence of the United States, according to excerpts from a State Department telegram consulted by POLITICO.
The conference, titled #Disinfo2026, included sessions in which the USA was described as an actor of “manipulation and foreign interference in the information field” (“foreign information manipulation and interference” – FIMI), something that upset the Trump administration, according to the telegram. The conference takes place on Wednesday and Thursday, in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
Pressures on allies
The State Department has asked American embassies in several European countries and alongside the EU to convey Washington’s concerns and to “assess” whether the governments involved in the conference agree with the characterization of the USA as a FIMI actor, according to the telegram.
FIMI is a term used by the EU to describe activities that attempt to distort public information, such as spreading online disinformation, typically by foreign actors like Russia. The conference puts the USA on the same level with “foreign adversaries like Russia and China”, which represents a “false equivalence” that “conceals the extent and nature of Russia’s and China’s interference in our democracies”, the telegram states.
The request for diplomatic action seems to represent an unusual move by the administration to use the pressure exerted on allied governments in order to silence the critics coming from European citizens and Americans abroad. Three American citizens participated in one of the panels that led to the transmission of the telegram.
The move also marks an escalation of the pressure campaign carried out by the Trump administration for several years in Europe, which includes US criticism of the alleged censorship exercised by the EU.
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