Trump Is Here for Three More Years—And What That Says About Europe and Canada
Donald Trump is not an American institution. He’s a symptom of institutional failure—specifically, the failure of the Democratic Party to govern competently across two administrations. Europeans and Canadians who treat his return as proof of permanent American unreliability are telling us something important, but not what they think they’re telling us.
How We Got Here
Trump exists as a political force because Democrats handed him the presidency. Twice.
In 2016, they ran the most disliked nominee in modern polling history against a reality TV star and lost. Rather than conduct an honest autopsy, they spent four years on Russia conspiracy theories that went nowhere. Then in 2020, they squeaked out a victory with Joe Biden’s promise to be a transitional figure who would restore normalcy.
What followed was anything but normal. Inflation hit levels not seen in forty years. The border dissolved into chaos. Crime spiked in major cities. The administration’s response to each crisis was to insist the crisis didn’t exist, then to blame someone else when that became untenable. They capped it off by running an obviously declining 81-year-old until it became impossible to hide, then swapped in his vice president with no primary process and expected gratitude.
Meanwhile, the party’s rising star is Gavin Newsom—the poster boy for Democratic Party incompetent governance, and the darling of Davos. It’s very telling that a hypocritical spoiled brat like Newsom is someone the European elites find common ground and camaraderie with.
Trump cannot run again. In three years, Americans will choose someone else.
The European Tell
Which brings us to Europe’s reaction—and what it reveals.
Within weeks of Trump’s return, European leaders began talking about “strategic autonomy” and reducing dependence on America. French President Macron lectures about European independence. German politicians muse about separate security arrangements. The European press treats Trump as though he represents a permanent American transformation rather than a temporary political correction.
This reaction is revealing, but not in the way Europeans imagine.
If your alliance crumbles because of one provocative president, it wasn’t much of an alliance. If seventy-five years of partnership evaporates because someone tweets mean things about NATO burden-sharing, the partnership was apparently more fragile than advertised.
The United States sent armies across an ocean twice to save Europe from itself and has been the world’s policeman ever since—sending troops around the globe, spending trillions, providing the stability that allowed the world economy to prosper. We have an alliance, but which country has actually done the work? Who paid the bills? Who sent their sons and daughters? Now, because we have an ill-mannered president who says rude things, Europe is ready to flip us off. Who exactly is the unreliable partner here? Trump is talking. He’s not doing anything. The troops are still there. The commitments are still there. But European leaders act as though mean tweets justify abandoning an alliance that has kept them safe for three generations.
Trump and his supporters claim that Europe is just freeloaders.
Europe had its chance to prove the critics wrong when Russia invaded Ukraine. Instead, they proved them right—doing just enough to claim participation while behaving in a shamelessly selfish way, squabbling over costs while Ukrainians bled, and hoping America would handle the hard parts. And now these same leaders question American reliability.
Yes, NATO spending numbers are finally ticking up—but as I wrote recently, Europe’s rearmament is a performance, and everyone knows it. The serious spending comes later. The factories come later. The political pain gets absorbed by future governments. Much of it, not coincidentally, comes due after Trump leaves office. Europe is betting that if it waits long enough, the bad man will go away and a new Obama will appear who has tea and fine pastries with them instead of sneaking out for a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder.
And we already ran this experiment. Trump left for four years. What did Europe do without someone barking at them? Nothing. They went right back to sleep until he came back.
Meanwhile, Greenland—population 56,000, occupying 1.4 percent of the earth’s surface—has become the hill Europe is willing to die on. The same continent that won’t help Ukraine in any meaningful or timely way is digging in over the rights of 56,000 people to this large fraction of the planet Earth.
Europe is hardly a continent of people that should be taken seriously.
It’s a land of countries that behave like spoiled teenagers but think they are the adults in the room.
The Canadian Meltdown
Canada depends on America for 75 percent of its exports and essentially all of its defense. Mark Carney won by promising to “stand up to Trump” and now talks about “Middle Power Realism” while finally—after two decades of lollygagging—hitting the 2 percent NATO target they agreed to in 2006.
Trump is just flapping his gums—the annexation talk is trolling, not policy. But Carney’s flirtation with China as a counterweight to American economic pressure looks less like realism and more like betrayal to Americans who remember which country actually guarantees Canadian security and is their almost 100% customer for what they produce.
Trump will be gone in three years. American memories of a Canadian prime minister cozying up to Beijing won’t disappear as quickly. That’s not Middle Power Realism—it’s just being stupid.
I can see why Carney gets along with Gavin Newsom so well. Bird brains of a feather flock together.
The Real Test
The test of European and Canadian seriousness isn’t how loudly they complain about Trump. It’s what they actually do besides make speeches and cozy up to America’s adversaries.
Do Europeans actually build military capability, or just issue more strategy documents? Does Canada get serious about defense spending and continental security, or keep coasting on American protection while complaining about American manners? Do they treat their obligations as genuine commitments, or keep expecting America to carry the load while they posture about independence?
The answer will tell us a lot about allied strategic judgment. So far, the signs aren’t encouraging.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause. He’s the result of Democratic governance failures that Americans rejected at the ballot box. He’s temporary. The damage allied leaders do to these relationships in response to their own panic about his presidency may not be.
And yes, Trump won twice. That’s not a fluke—it’s a message. The same guy for the same problem. It didn’t go away with Biden; it got reinforced. But that’s America’s domestic issue to sort out, not an excuse for allies to abandon ship.
That’s the real story here. Not that America elected Trump, but that our allies are ready to throw us under the bus because we have a rude president once in 75 years.
Who is the unreliable party here?