Europe is endangered by Trump the “destroyer”

I cruised into the little town of Clifden at a stout 125 kilometers per hour on a narrow two-lane road just as Storm Bram was ravaging Ireland’s Atlantic coast. On the radio, “Hells Bells” by AC/DC sounded my arrival. 

I had just passed through the town of Oughterard, where I saw my first signs of Donald Trump fandom since leaving the States. At a junk and rug dealer shop, the proprietor hung “Trump 2024” banners outside, along with other assorted odds and ends for sale.

“He’s a crazy twit,” a hotel manager said of the Trump fan when I mentioned it to him. The “i” in twit was pronounced as an “a.” What he had to say about Trump was worse.  “Face it. He’s a destroyer.”

In Ireland, as well as in the rest of Europe, the president is viewed “like a bearded lady in a circus sideshow” I was told — at least when he wasn’t seen as a “crazy gangster who abandoned his friends.”

In Dublin, a national police inspector told me that Trump is being investigated in Ireland for buying property with Russian money. “Nobody likes him,” he said. “We think he’s taking you guys into a civil war.” 

Few people in European governments have good feelings for Trump. Many see him as an errand boy for Russian President Vladimir Putin…

Few people in European governments have good feelings for Trump. Many see him as an errand boy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and while we in America worry about the Epstein scandal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement patrols, the Justice Department, vaccines, education, our floundering press corps and a wide variety of other scandals, in Europe the focus is on Russia’s ongoing hegemony against NATO and the European Union.

In 2026, Ireland will host a gathering of all 27 EU heads of state in Dublin. They are all concerned about security — especially after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that unidentified drones were spotted near the flight path of his plane during his trip to Dublin last week. While Russia has denied ownership of the drones, EU security officials continue to suspect Putin was behind the incursion into European air space. “Who else would it be?” a member of Trump’s national security team told me Tuesday on background.

European Council President António Costa described the incident in the Irish Independent as “another example of a hybrid attack from Russia into European territory. It is not new but, in all our countries we are now managing with these threats.”

European leaders are now fundamentally questioning the validity of the United States’ commitment to being an ally. Trump’s recent appeal is for Ukraine to “play ball” with Putin to end Russia’s war of aggression, though Zelenskyy has said Ukraine will give up no territory to Russia. “Trump’s ‘peace plan’ could pass as a pamphlet penned by Putin,” read a headline in the Irish Independent. On Dec. 2, Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, published an op-ed in Foreign Affairs titled “The West’s Last Chance” arguing that the post-World War II order built on cooperation, rules and shared values is breaking down as wars multiply and alliances fracture. As a result, he wrote, without coordinated Western leadership, authoritarian regimes will reshape the global order in their image, and that Ukraine will be the first, but “not the last,” victim.

Back in the States, the Washington Post reported Tuesday that Trump’s “peace plan” has pushed “transatlantic relations to their lowest point since [he] returned to the White House.”

Meanwhile, according to the Times of London, NATO chief Mark Rutte is urging member states to step up their defense spending because Putin is now targeting Europe for war. “We are Russia’s next target and we are already in harm’s way,” Rutte said. “We must all accept that we must act to defend our way of life now. Because this year Russia has become even more brazen, reckless and ruthless towards NATO and towards Ukraine.”

Many in Europe blame Trump for this descent into madness. According to a friend of mine at the BBC, millions in Europe believe the president is “in over his head” and “incapable of doing anything that resembles real statesmanship — unless you consider being a fascist dictator decent statesmanship.” After news broke that Trump had apparently demanded a FIFA “Peace Prize” because he can’t get the Nobel Peace Prize, my friend commented, “What’s next? A prize for the best nap in a cabinet meeting?”

With Trump, it’s laugh or cry — and it’s usually both in the same moment. But it doesn’t get any more serious than world peace, which the Europeans believe will only occur at the cost of human suffering in Europe, Africa and Asia, if it occurs at all. “Allies must act as allies,” Costa said of the president. 

“He’s losing the war,” Trump said of Zelenskyy prior to the Ukrainian president’s meeting with Pope Leo XIV last week. Trump has warned Zelenskyy to accept his peace proposal because “Size will win, generally,” and indicated that Russia “has the upper hand.” European leaders, though, say that pressure on Putin must be ramped up. 

As for our closest allies, Trump observed, “Europe doesn’t know what to do. They want to be politically correct, and it makes them weak.”

Meanwhile, after his meeting with Zelenskyy, Pope Leo countered the president’s appeasement of Russia with calling for a “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine. 

The sad reality is that it may be too late to preserve post-World War II norms. The West may have already lost its last chance, if it is depending upon the United States. War may, unfortunately, be inevitable.

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In America, our news cycle is consumed with Trump’s physical and mental well-being, of him taking a nap during a Cabinet meeting or slurring words. There’s also his lack of due process, potential war crimes, grift, graft, outright thievery and political corruption on a grand scale we’ve never seen in this country, as well as a lack of education and information that is even more frightening in its scope for what it portends about the future dystopia in what was once the United States.

Any future where our European allies stand strong against totalitarian aggression from Russia, China or elsewhere will have to be done without America, the country that rebuilt Europe after World War II with the Marshall Plan. It is now abandoning Europe as part of the Donald Trump-Vladimir Putin plan.

Trump doesn’t even hide his disdain for our allies. “They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on,” he said in an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns. He didn’t mention the fact that the Russians have shown no real commitment to stopping the invasion they started. 

Trump simply doesn’t care. His administration is even proposing to ask visitors from several dozen nations that enjoy visa-free travel to the U.S. to submit additional personal information before entering the country, including five years of their social media history, the Department of Homeland Security said in a notice this week.

Citizens of 42 countries enrolled in the visa waiver program can generally come to the U.S. for up to 90 days for tourism or business travel, without needing to apply for a visa at an American embassy or consulate, a process that can take months or even years.The list of countries includes many European nations like the United Kingdom, Germany and France, as well as other U.S. allies around the world, including Australia, Israel, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

It is of little surprise that critics of the proposed changes said they could scare prospective travelers and negatively impact tourism, especially months before the U.S. hosts the 2026 FIFA World Cup, alongside Canada and Mexico, next summer. 

“We’re really frightened for you over here,” the Irish police inspector explained. “Believe me, we know about troubles. You’ve got them.”

“We’re really frightened for you over here,” the Irish police inspector explained. “Believe me, we know about troubles. You’ve got them.”

Outside of Clifden, there is a golf course favored by Bill Murray. In town, the patrons at the many Irish pubs cheer on him and actor John C. Reilly, who they say has, on occasion, led their St. Patrick’s Day parade. They love American entertainers — almost as much as they love St. Patrick’s Day. “Can you think of any other person who has a day set aside to celebrate him in every country on the planet?” someone asked me at Lowry’s pub Tuesday evening. 

“Well, just that guy from the Middle East,” I said. 

It got a laugh. “I love Americans and their sense of humor,” I was told.

Americans are still generally liked, but we are increasingly seen as the victims of a huge scam that is enveloping the planet.

European leaders know that Trump and Trumpism is an existential threat — and so do the average pub dwellers throughout Europe.

The world is more volatile now than at any time since the end of World War II and with Trump intent on destroying the alliance that rebuilt Europe and made the world a more stable place, Europeans fear we are heading into “darker times”. 

I thought of that as I pulled out of Clifden for Dublin. As I sped down the narrow two-lane road, passing through cold, wet fields populated by more sheep than people, the radio blared lyrics I hadn’t heard in years. “You broke bonds / and you loosed the chains,” Bono sang. He still hadn’t found what he was looking for and it’s obvious we haven’t either.

Some thought Trump would solve all of our problems. But he is the problem and the stakes are getting higher.

“You Yanks elected an idiot,” I was told all throughout Europe in the last two weeks. “He’s daft, in bad physical health and you all don’t see it. The rest of the world sees it. America is acting like what you call a banana republic. When are you going to see that?”

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