It is among the most familiar patterns of the Trump era. First, the president says or does something weird, rude or otherwise norm-defying. Some elected Republicans object, and the response from Trump and his minions is to shoot the messenger. The dynamic holds constant whether it’s big (January 6 pardons) or small (tweeting “covfefe” just after midnight).
The essence of this low-road-for-me-high-road-for-thee dynamic rests on the belief that Trumpism is a one-way road. Insulting Trump, deservedly or not, is forbidden, while Trump’s antics should be celebrated when possible, defended when necessary, or ignored when neither of those responses is possible. But he should never, ever face consequences for his own actions.
This was the week Trump’s routine went global.
A number of longtime defenders of the transatlantic alliance are very angry at our allies.
NATO members have refused to allow American jets to launch from, or even over, their territory. They won’t help secure the Strait of Hormuz. French President Emmanuel Macron has even called for a coalition to “stand up” against both the United States and China.
I think these are serious strategic mistakes, especially Macron’s posturing to go out like a modern-day de Gaulle instead of as a lame duck. But politically, they are hardly shocking.
Let’s review how we got here.
Trump has routinely mocked our allies. For efficiency’s sake, let’s forgive all of the petty jabs from the first term ostensibly intended to get them to spend more on defense. In Trump’s second term, he claimed our NATO allies would never fight on our behalf, despite the fact that the only time NATO invoked Article 5 — an attack on one is an attack on all — was in the wake of 9/11.
Back in January, in Davos, Switzerland, Trump revised this false claim, admitting that some did fight in Afghanistan, but that “they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.” This infuriated not just allied leaders, but their voters. Indeed, Trump is even unpopular with the populist right across most of Europe.
On a per capita basis, Denmark, not America, had the most casualties in Afghanistan.
Speaking of Denmark, Trump threatened to go to war with the Danes to take possession of Greenland. The threats, public and private, were so relentless and serious that Denmark had to actually plan for a war against the U.S.
Trump didn’t go as far with Canada, but he poisoned that alliance with his repeated insistence that Canada should become America’s 51st state.
Trump also cut off most direct military aid to Ukraine, opting instead to strong-arm Europe into buying American weapons to boost our defense industry. And all while lending rhetorical aid and comfort to Russian President Vladimir Putin as Trump’s “peace envoy” talked up business deals with Russia.
Trump abrogated trade agreements with our allies to levy massive tariffs on nearly all of them, forcing many countries to pursue trade agreements with China. His erratic shifting of policies and rates sent allied economies scrambling. Trump’s American defenders may roll their eyes at his openness to emoluments — a plane from Qatar, a gold bar and Rolex from Swiss business leaders, a crown from South Korea — but just imagine how this stuff is viewed by the broader public in allied countries. Trump mocks notions of shared values, but if you bring him a trinket, he’ll talk.
Then Trump launched a surprise war on Iran without consulting our allies. When British Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested sending aircraft carriers to help, Trump mocked him.
“That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer,” Trump posted on Truth social. “But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”
Trump has since changed his tune. In his national address last week, Trump essentially called our allies cowards who needed to muster some “delayed courage.” On Monday, he explained he was done with NATO because they refused to give him Greenland.
Trump’s one-way-street antics work domestically because of his support within the GOP base. But he can’t incite a primary challenge to elected allied leaders, not when he’s loathed. In January his approval rating in the U.K. was 16 percent (and in Denmark just 4 percent). One in 5 Europeans see America as a greater threat than China or North Korea.
Again, I think it would be good for Europe—which has seen energy prices skyrocket because of the war and still needs the U.S. for its security—to swallow some of the humiliation and help. But the refusal of Trump and his defenders to acknowledge why it’s politically hard at this point is maddening.
Trump would never dream of taking a devastating political hit for an ally. But he and his defenders cannot fathom why allies feel the same way about him.
(Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.)
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.