Look, I’m a patriotic American. I voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and after moving to Hungary in 2022, I supported his election in 2024 from abroad. I also agree with Donald Trump that it is strategically important for the United States to acquire Greenland.
But with his latest bid to use tariffs to extort Europe into selling Greenland to America, Trump seems to have lost his mind.
This past weekend, Trump declared that he will punish eight European countries with 10 percent tariffs until Denmark surrenders Greenland to the United States. He then tied his Greenland pique to his failure to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The mind reels at the insanity of an American president acting with such petulance. He’s an Outer Borough Julius Caesar, the Don(ald) Corleone of Pennsylvania Avenue.
I have no undue sympathies toward Europe. The Trump administration has long taken a hard-line stance toward the continent, and I have defended that position to European audiences since Vice President J.D. Vance’s Munich speech last February. Vance was right to call Europe decadent. He was right to criticize its governments for suppressing free speech and failing to deal with its migration problems. Many conservative Europeans agree with Vance that the continent is facing a civilizational crisis: fertility rates are falling, illiberal speech codes leave citizens behind bars for political dissent, and mass immigration has been a disaster.
