A Strengthened European Immune System: Is Trump’s Madness Not as Contagious After All?

The strongly protectionist American president's greatest fear is the import of democratic thought systems and ideology. Contrarily, he has great ambitions for the export of racism and nationalism.

For a president who insists on applying banal tricks from his past as a real estate investor to politics, having to realize that foreign policy is more complicated than making a 'deal' on real estate has been a disappointment.

Back to the Stone Age

Even as he threatens to wipe out a country and bomb it back to the Stone Age, destroy the civil population's power grid and infrastructure, as he does in Iran, he cannot land a 'deal.'

The 48-hour deadline to reach an agreement has already been exceeded by several weeks, even though it keeps being repeated from the gilded office in Washington.

It also shows how the president's memory has taken a turn for the worse.

Yet, he is currently making a new attempt to export his ideology, whatever that may be, apart from vulgar, brutal and anti-democratic, to Europe.

On the eve of an election campaign where the Hungarian far-right Viktor Orban risks losing, Trump has sent his parrot, Vice President J.D. Vance, to prevent a defeat.

Orban is, among many other things, Vladimir Putin's man in Europe. And that is perhaps why he is also Donald Trump's most important ally.

The problem is that the export and ideology cannot be regulated with tariffs, alongside bombs and rockets, which are the only tools that Trump possesses in his stunted toolbox.

Pure insults

50 percent tariffs on liberal values may sound tempting, but they are difficult to implement in practice.

Also read:

‘Those With Both Feet Planted on the Ground Stand Still’ – On American Bases in the Arctic

Therefore, the American administration has taken to podium after podium in Europe with clear warnings, in the form of pure insults, against liberal ideas. Most recently in the form of J.D. Vance, equipped with his wife, Usha Vance.

She has been on tour before. Amid strong protests, the American second lady visited Greenland in 2025.

The visit was perceived as so provocative that she finally chose to bring her vice president husband, while also significantly reducing the stay, in addition to being limited to the American military base Pituffik Space Base.

A three-day trip was reduced to a brief visit of barely four hours.

Rarely has the phrase "to leave with one's tail between one's legs" been more fitting for a state visit.

The reception in Hungary is much friendlier, but among an increasingly less enthusiastic part of the Hungarian electorate.

The good news is that increasingly larger parts of the scorched Europe seem to be turning their backs on Donald Trump. One of Trump's favorites, Italian, strongly right-wing, Georgia Meloni, might be the clearest example.

Despite the ideological kinship between the two, the Iran war and lack of support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia have put the transatlantic romance to a severe test.

National ideology

Other far-right parties in Europe have also turned from fawning admiration to strong protests. The fear of energy shortages and hordes of refugees due to the war in the Middle East is not on the wish list of European nationalists. Nor do Trump's threats against Greenland fit into a nationalist ideology.

In the Nordic Arctic, Trump's ideological stew never gained a foothold. The proximity to Russia and the Greenland issue reduce the Trump congregation to individuals suffering from an almost pathological urge for self-exposure.

Unlike a pandemic, there is no vaccine against ideological debris crossing the Atlantic.

But perhaps we can take comfort in the fact that the immune system, at least to some extent, seems to be strengthened on the European side.