Picture this: Thousands of people strolling the streets of a nation's capital city that looks like something plucked straight from a storybook. The buildings are lit up with festive, brightly colored lights and adorned with holiday decor, ranging from nutcrackers to Christmas trees. Kids visit with Santa, families decorate cookies and watch parades, and people flood the markets and food stalls, looking for a special treat. There's an ice skating rink, fireworks, and friends and relatives who have traveled from other countries just to be a part of it all. Police and other security officials loiter in the background — noticeable but not in the way — to ensure safety, but the crowd carries on largely carefree and unbothered. Everyone is here to celebrate Christmas.
Now, picture this: You and your family head into town for your local Christmas market, but before you can enter, police carrying submachine guns and security guards stop and question you. Once you make it past the checkpoint, you stroll the streets lined with picturesque stalls set up to create a charming Christmas village, each one filled with handmade goods and delicious-smelling food. The lights that illuminate your path are warm and welcoming, but neither the lights nor the red and green paint hide the fact that the market is surrounded by concrete blocks meant to keep cars at bay. Sandbags and security barriers fill in around the edges. And when you walk past the memorial for the ones who died there last year, including a nine-year-old boy, you can't help but feel sad when you see all the flowers and candles. The holiday spirit comes with an asterisk and was almost canceled out of fear.
Both of these are real. Both are happening right now. The difference is that the first one is in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, while the other is in Magdeburg, Germany. For years, the Salvadoran people were afraid to even walk these streets because they were taken over by gangs. Agree with his methods or not — we can talk about that later — President Nayib Bukele did something about it, and his constituents love him for it.
BREAKING 🚨 El Salvador Presiden, Nayib Bukele just unveiled the “Christmas Village”. This is what happens when you get rid of CRIME
— MAGA Voice (@MAGAVoice) December 6, 2025
Trump’s Policies work worldwide 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ZQ20kCgmt0
Meanwhile, all we've ever heard here in the United States is how Europe is such a model of peace, safety, stability, and enlightenment, yet the German people are hesitant to go into public for a Christmas market because they're afraid some extremist might plow a car into them while they're simply enjoying an evening out with friends and family.
That's exactly what happened in Magdeburg last year. On December 20, a man originally from Saudi Arabia drove an SUV into the crowd, killing six people, including that nine-year-old boy, and injuring hundreds of others, and it's definitely not the first time. Since the turn of the century, and especially over the past decade, there have been multiple people arrested for attacking or planning to attack Christmas markets in countries like Germany and France.
These beautiful, festive events have taken place for centuries, but as the Hungarian Conservative reports, they are "no longer synonymous with calm, safety, and festive nostalgia" and are now "soft targets for Islamic terror," especially in Western Europe where mass migration is literally changing the culture.
🇩🇪 Germany’s Christmas markets are opening, but this year, getting in feels more like entering a military base. Millions of euros are being spent on security.
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) November 26, 2025
After past car-ramming attacks in Berlin and Magdeburg, cities are tightening safety measures: Bremen is allocating an… pic.twitter.com/NI1LFStg61
None of this happened overnight, but the difference is that El Salvador's leaders, like our own president, were decisive and unapologetic about cleaning the country up, dismantling dangerous gangs, and prioritizing the safety of the majority of law-abiding citizens. In Europe, most of the governments are too worried about offending anyone and arresting people for sharing memes instead of doing something to battle mass migration and the extremism that came with it that is plaguing the continent.
And it's not just Christmas — it's anything joyful. For example, tourism is on the rise in countries like El Salvador and Argentina, where leaders like Bukele and Javier Milei are doing away with crime and corruption. I suspect we'll see the same in places like Chile and Bolivia soon — both have just election similar presidents — and who knows, one day, maybe even Venezuela.
El Salvador actually has one of the fastest-growing tourism rates in the world. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking of spending a few days there in 2026 myself just to check it out. I never would have even considered it a few years ago. Meanwhile, some places in Europe are seeing declines, especially from United States visitors, and if nothing changes, I can imagine that will continue.
Even our own State Department has lowered El Salvador's travel advisory to a Level 1 this year, which simply means exercise normal precautions. Meanwhile, Germany is a Level 2, which means exercise increased caution, due to the potential for terrorism.
"Terrorist groups and lone actors remain a constant threat in Germany and Europe, attacking people in public locations with knives, small arms, rudimentary explosive devices, and vehicles. Such attacks may occur with little or no warning..." the State Department website reads.
France, Spain, and the United Kingdom also have Level 2 advisories, with terrorism being a main reason why.
Someone made a comment on one my articles recently about how they don't care about these "s***hole" countries in Central and South America that I often write about, but the fact is that Latin America is changing for the better, while many countries in Europe are the ones heading in the wrong direction. As a matter of fact, many of these newly elected "Trump-like" leaders in some of these countries were elected largely because of their stances against mass migration and a desire to embrace Western values and partner with the United States.
Donald Trump and Marco Rubio recognize this. That's one reason why their recently unveiled national security strategy involves taking a step back from Europe and embracing our allies in the Western Hemisphere, as well as working with our allies to clean up the Americans, ridding our backyard of cartels and organized crime, and the corrupt and communist regimes that facilitate them.
We're experiencing a unique turning point in history, and if you ever question it, just look to the Christmas markets.
