Trump, definitely more Lex Luthor than Dale Carnegie
Our friends in Europe respond to the latest round of insults from the White House
By Sam Bellamy
Every now and then, I see a yellowed copy of pioneer self-improvement guru Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” on a used bookstore shelf. As I have throughout my life, I carefully avoid it because of my lifelong allergies to gladhanding and backslapping. But I’m beginning to think a few thousand copies of that 1936 classic might be a useful read for both the accomplished and aspiring sociopaths in the White House.
Ever since the bitterly cold day in January when we were yanked back into this Trumpian nightmare, our apparently love-deprived leaders have sought to make enemies of every single nation and people in the world – except, of course, Russia and its out-the-window-with-you! mob boss, Vladimir Putin.
I mean, we’ve alienated Canadians, who are accurately described by a website called The Canada Guide as “mostly friendly, unpretentious people who value honesty, sensitivity, empathy and humility in their relationships with friends and strangers.”
Supervillains thrive on shit – especially our boorish “stable genius,” who has found a way to one-up Lex Luthor and all the other bad guys in comic book land. Trump is dispensing with elaborate schemes to destroy the world and focusing on one simple grand plan: Make fierce enemies of your friends. The rest will just fall right into place.
Look around. Our European allies are all behaving like the notoriously (and stereotypically) rude French, loudly (and justifiably) railing about the oaf in the Oval Office whose fondness for well-done steaks slathered with ketchup is just one of his pathologies.
And Trump, of course, has surrounded himself with others who move through life under the misimpression that they need absolutely no one, except maybe Trump, to succeed in this world.
Take, for instance, this exchange on the now-infamous Signal chat where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance and numerous Cabinet-level officials played a digital version of the old board game Risk for the benefit of the stranger in their midst, The Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg.
“I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance whined at one point as the group planned a bombing run on Houthi terrorists in Yemen to open up shipping routes for international trade.
“VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC,” Hegseth replies.
Here is where the eminently calm and reasonable Dale Carnegie might have intervened: “Winning friends begins with friendliness.” (OK, I peeked at the book. And I have hives, thank you very much.)
Europeans seem not at all surprised by this exchange.
The insults from Vance and Hegseth echo months of haranguing by Trump, who repeatedly claims – with his usual disregard for facts – that European countries aren’t paying full price for NATO. Not coincidentally, Putin wants to see NATO vanish, no doubt because he wants to vanish territorial boundaries across Europe, with help from a reconstituted and remodeled version of the high-stepping Red Army.
Let’s take a tour of some reactions of Europeans to the Signal chat comments by Vance and Hiccups Hegseth, shall we?
While we’re putting the finishing touches on our protest signs for the spring protest season, it’s good to remind ourselves how Trump and crew are winning enemies and alienating people in our name.
“There are no adults in the room anymore in Washington,” Nathalie Loiseau, a European Parliament lawmaker from France, posted on X. “Putin is now unemployed: No point in spying anymore, the leaks come from the [Americans] themselves.”
“US Vice President and Secretary of Defense loathe Europe (as they try to extort money out of it),” Mike Martin, a member of the British Parliament who sits on the Defense Select Committee, wrote on X.
“JD Vance and his mates clearly aren’t fit to run a group chat, let alone the world’s strongest military force. It has to make our security services nervous about the intelligence we’re sharing with them.” Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, a British opposition party, told Politico.
“Emojis, puberty outbursts, and amateurish war plans: The banality of stupidity,” German political commentator Nikolaus Blome posted on X.
"The Trump administration does not see allies, only dependents he considers parasites," former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine said in an interview with Newsweek.
“European countries have always been a reliable ally to the US in times of need. After 9/11, Europe was a crucial force in the US-led coalition against terrorism,' Mārtiņš Staķis, a member of the European Parliament from Latvia, told the Daily Mail in London. “Calling Europe 'freeloaders' is an insult to the European soldiers who were wounded or gave their lives.”
“Vance was quite clear: We don’t share the same values,” François Heisbourg, a French analyst and former defense official, said in an interview with The New York Times.
“In the amazing story of the Signal group coordinating Yemen air strikes, Vice President JD Vance once again comes out as driven by deep anti-European resentment,” former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt wrote on X.
“It is clear that the trans-Atlantic relationship, as was, is over, and there is, at best, an indifferent disdain,” Nathalie Tocci, director of Italy’s Institute of International Affairs, who formerly advised a top European Union official, told The New York Times. “And at worst, and closer to that, there is an active attempt to undermine Europe.”
“The narrative on Europe in the U.S. is becoming nasty, but to be frank, the narrative on the U.S. in Europe is also becoming like that,” Brando Benifei, a member of the European Parliament from Italy and head of the legislative body’s delegation for relations with the United States, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The trust of our people on the utility and strength of our transatlantic bond is falling quickly, and not in fringe groups, but in large areas of public opinion.”
“Could we start talking to each other as allies and not enemies?” Danish member of European Parliament Christel Schaldemose asked in an interview with The New York Times.
Sweet thought, Christel. But as much as most Americans would like otherwise, you’ll probably get nowhere with that Dale Carnegie schtick, even if you surrender Greenland.