I have two daughters living in the United Kingdom. Both of them are United States citizens, and they love this country. But they are certainly not grateful to President Donald Trump for going to war.
They wake up worried about what Trump will do next.
Like many people living in countries that have long considered themselves America’s closest allies, they are terrified he could unleash World War III.
For the president and his acolytes to complain angrily about the perceived lack of gratitude from U.S. allies shows just how out of touch Trump has become with the reality of the world outside his billionaire bubble.
There are now two defining stories of Trump’s second term, with outcomes the president had not foreseen.
One is the war with Iran that the administration appears to have blundered into without understanding how it was going to get out.
The other is the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, where Trump pledged full transparency on the campaign trail and has spent the past year trying to walk it back.
Trump has been see-sawing between giving friendly foreign leaders offhand compliments and throwing them under the bus ever since his return to the White House. With the notable exception of Volodymyr Zelensky, he smiles and shakes their hands by day and lashes out at them on Truth Social at night like some demented Jekyll and Hyde.
Just a few days ago, he fired off an incendiary post naming Indo-Pacific allies such as Japan and Australia for not helping him unblock the Strait of Hormuz. Perhaps he’d forgotten he was hosting Japan’s new leader a few days later. Or he didn’t care.
Japan’s first-ever female Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was the model of restraint on Thursday when Trump made the kind of off-color joke your rudest uncle would never make.
A Japanese journalist, with an insightful question showing up our shellshocked White House press corps, asked why Trump didn’t tell America’s allies in Asia and Europe that he was planning to strike, considering, “we are very good friends.”
Takaichi, 68, retained her composure as the 79-year-old president replied: “You don’t want to signal too much, you know? When we go in, we went in very hard, and we didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan?“
He delayed a second, perhaps thinking he shouldn’t go there. Then he did. ”Okay, why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor? You believe in surprise, I think much more so than us.”
The biggest surprise was that nobody was greatly surprised that Trump would utter something so insensitive.
Nor was it a great surprise that Trump’s son, Eric—sometimes touted as his political successor—should post an equally inane message celebrating the awkward moment as, “One of the great responses to a reporter in history!”
Defense Secretary “Pentagon Pete” Hegseth mimicked his boss on Thursday morning, saying: “The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments of our own press should be saying one thing to President Trump: thank you.”
Thank you for what? Until a couple of weeks ago, one of our “ungrateful allies,” Denmark, was fully expecting Trump to use his military might to grab Greenland. Canada was being touted as the 51st state.
Mostly, America’s allies put up with it for economic reasons. But nobody wants to be drawn into a war they were not informed about and had spent decades trying to avoid.
It now seems clear, from Trump’s own admissions, that he did not expect Iran to launch attacks on his allies in the Middle East.
He spent the first months of his second presidency cosying up to the money men in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
And now he has set fire to the region’s sensitive balance and upset his “friends” in the process. All that money spent trying to turn the Arab states into tourist destinations. Who is heading for the sand with missiles blotting out the sun?
And oil plants on fire in Iran and Qatar are not good news for anyone’s bank accounts.
U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is tap dancing over the Special Relationship, worried about unwittingly leading his country into an unwanted war, and trashing his legacy with comparisons to George W. Bush’s lapdog Tony Blair, who invaded Iraq based on fake claims that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
Spain kept it simple. It just said no to Trump using their air bases.
Trump told the world he obliterated Iran’s nuclear threat back last June. Nobody’s buying the need to obliterate them again.
NATO, another target of Trump’s scorn, is a transatlantic coalition formed to guarantee security through collective defense, ensuring an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Just a quick reminder. The U.S. attacked Iran. Not the other way around.
For America’s allies, the war Trump started is much too close to home.
Trump’s other unresolved matter, that of his one-time pal Jeffrey Epstein, has been received more warmly around the world. Like it or not, the administration’s blunders have re-ignited a scandal that had flickered out until his return to power.
The release of the Epstein files has unleashed new scrutiny of the behavior of once-untouchables like former Prince Andrew and “Prince of Darkness” Lord Peter Mandelson.
The evil of Epstein’s collaborators, like French model agency boss Jean Luc Brunel, has emerged from the files.
Trump’s allies have no problem with America exposing the repellent actions of a wealthy clique that believed itself above the law. They will say “thank you” for that.
Just as long as Trump didn’t go to war with the hope that everyone would forget all about it.
