Across the pond, across the line by Nadine Moreau

Watching the Trump administration posture toward Europe over the years has been like witnessing a soap opera written in real time by someone who never learned to read the room. There’s a pattern here, a familiar rhythm, a blend of aggression, contempt, and performative superiority that somehow masks a deep, simmering insecurity. When figures like Donald Trump and his emissaries, including the ever-vocal Rudy Giuliani-alike, JD Vance, castigate European leaders or sneer at the European Union, it’s rarely about policy. It’s about ego, wounded pride, and, let’s be honest, a particular kind of cultural resentment.

What’s striking is how personal it all feels. Trump’s disdain for European institutions, whether NATO, the EU, or even the quaint little traditions of parliamentary democracy, isn’t cloaked in the usual diplomatic jargon. It’s blunt, almost adolescent in its bluntness: tariffs here, insults there, dismissive hand-waves at centuries-old alliances. For those paying attention, it reads like someone who never quite felt at home at a dinner party, now holding a microphone and shouting about how the hors d'oeuvres are overpriced. It’s jealousy dressed as political strategy.

Consider the psychology. Europe, in its leisurely, history-soaked way, represents a kind of refinement and global influence that cannot be purchased, won in a reality TV competition, or built with skyscrapers and golf courses. Trump and his inner circle who spent a lifetime in the peculiarly American crucible of wealth, fame and competition, see Europe’s prestige and shrug it off as snobbery or elitism. But underneath that sneer is discomfort; Europe doesn’t need them, doesn’t flatter them, and certainly doesn’t bend to their worldview. It’s a continent that has existed for centuries without consulting Mar-a-Lago, and that autonomy is threatening.

Then there’s the cultural clash. Trumpism thrives on the logic of the deal, the charisma of the individual, the spectacle of winning. Europe, with its social democracies, labour protections, and multilateralism, operates on compromise, patience, and systems that reward collective over personal triumph. For a personality that equates personal success with universal validation, that’s not just baffling it’s offensive. This is not policy disagreement; it’s a kind of cultural dissonance amplified into political theater. Every European refusal to bow, every critique from Brussels or Berlin, is interpreted as a personal slight, a rejection of the very idea that Trump’s version of the world should reign supreme.

And the menacing rhetoric is part of the arsenal. It’s both a shield and a signal: a shield to protect fragile ego from the judgment of institutions that do not answer to reality TV ratings and a signal to followers that Trump’s disdain isn’t just rhetorical, it’s righteous. Vance and others amplify this, framing Europe as an antagonist, a foreign other that must be tamed or mocked. It’s reminiscent of schoolyard psychology: bully the peer who makes you feel small, and in doing so, convince yourself you’re tall.

It’s also performative, of course. Hostility toward Europe plays well to a domestic audience that values toughness, disruption, and the fantasy of reclaiming lost grandeur. But make no mistake: there’s a real emotional kernel here. It’s not merely strategy; it’s resentment and insecurity wrapped in nationalist bravado. The continent that endured wars, rebuilt itself, and developed a social and political sophistication that Trump’s circle treats as quaint or irrelevant becomes, in their eyes, both a threat and a prize: a threat to their ego, a prize they can never truly conquer.

So yes, it’s partially jealousy; a complicated, toxic admiration filtered through disdain. But it’s also, in equal measure, pure contempt: for a way of life they never grasped, for a culture that quietly rejects their values, and for a history that refuses to bend to modern self-interest. When Trump threatens tariffs or makes cutting remarks about European leaders, it’s not only about policy leverage; it’s about marking territory, asserting superiority over a civilization that refuses to acknowledge it. And in that performative assertion, one sees the vulnerability, the need for validation, and the almost comical frustration of a worldview constantly bumping up against centuries of self-assured European independence.

In the end, Trump’s menace toward Europe isn’t clever diplomacy or strategy; it’s insecurity in full bloom. It’s the adolescent tantrum of a man and a movement that mistake global respect for personal approval, that see centuries of history and culture as something to conquer, rather than something to respect. And in that sense, Europe remains, ironically, both untouchable and utterly provocative: a mirror, in which Trump and his circle see the reflection of what they will never, and can never, truly be.