Sami Winc: Apparently, according to a Wall Street Journal article, they had a secret meeting in which they vented their frustration about [President Donald] Trump. They called it “Therapy Night.” But what the article said was they were discussing how to manage a breakup with the United States.
Do you think that—
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Victor Davis Hanson: Promises, promises.
Winc: I know. I was going to say, do you think that the Europeans would really break with the United States?
Hanson: No, I know they won’t. Why do I know that? Because I’m not stupid. Spain was—I think his name is Gonzalez. Isn’t he the prime minister of Spain?
Winc: I think it’s [Pedro] Sanchez.
Hanson: Yep. Sorry. He was bragging that he was not going to spend over 2%, and he was bragging to his own people after he let in 500,000 illegal people from Africa who were going to be able to go all through Europe, given they were given green cards from the Spanish government.
But he was also bragging that he denied U.S. access to a NATO joint base, that he wouldn’t let them use airspace, and that kind of influenced everybody wanting to tag along.
“Well, I’m [Emmanuel] Macron. We’ll do the same. We won’t let them.”
And then Germany said, “Well, you know, I’ve already called it. It’s not our war. We’ll just kind of keep our bases away.”
And then [Giorgia] Meloni said, “Oh, my defense minister said you can’t land much more in Sicily. It’s now closed.”
And then [Keir] Starmer said, “You can’t go to Diego Garcia unless it’s defensive.”
So, then they all kind of backed off. That’s what they do. So, when Trump said, “Well, Spain is the worst offender. We’re just not going to trade, and we don’t have any ill feeling with them. We’re not going to trade with them.”
What was it? Twenty-four hours later, he approached Trump and said, “Please, please.”
And then, when Trump told [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, “Yeah, [Joe] Biden wouldn’t let you hit anything. That’s kind of dangerous going in there. It’s a provocation, but go ahead. Go hit stuff like you’re doing with your drones.”
Biden never did that. That confused the Europeans.
“Hey, wait a minute. Trump is a neo-isolationist and he wants Russia to win, but he’s letting Zelenskyy do things that Biden didn’t do, that we cautioned him not to do? This is strange. But on the other hand, he killed the Wagner Group, and he raised sanctions on the oligarchs, and he gave them Javelin offensive weapons when [Barack] Obama didn’t. He got out of an asymmetrical missile deal, blah, blah, blah.”
So, they talk a great game, but they have 500 million people in Europe—450 million, I think, are NATO and combined EU countries.
And they have a social welfare program that has been overrun by 30 or 40 million people from Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, and it’s not sustainable.
And it was paid for in the past because they were very, very smart economists, socialists though they were. But when you shut down the North Sea oil fields, you don’t let the French companies tap natural gas, and the Germans shut down their nuclear plants, and electricity costs in Britain or Germany are anywhere from twice to four times as high as here, you can’t afford it.
You cannot afford it. And then, when all this is predicated on a $200 billion trade surplus with us, it doesn’t work.
So, Trump’s message wasn’t to punish Europe. It was always, “Please, please be a partner because we have another common enemy, and it’s called China. And we have other countries just like you that depend on us, like South Korea and the Philippines and Taiwan and Japan and Australia.
“And we can’t give good attention when we’ve got 75,000 troops tied down here on the border with [Vladimir] Putin, and we’ve got all this aircraft, and you’ll still be on the nuclear deterrent. But if you can just go up to 5%, maybe we can protect you with 30,000 or 40,000.”
But instead it was crazy.
It was like, “Eighty-three years after World War II, you dare take troops out of our country? You can’t do that, America. You’re 7,000 miles away. You’re right next to us. You can’t do that. You have no business doing that. And of course, we don’t want you to use our bases when we feel that it might be inconvenient, and you can’t use our airspace. But how dare you say that 82 years after World War II you’re going to take out any troops?”
That’s Donald Trump. Trump, Trump, Trump. It doesn’t work anymore, Euros. We’re tired of it.
And if you look at all the criticism that Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance have leveled, and you wade through all the rhetoric and the therapy, it’s basically:
“We want Europe to be a partner. It’s a Western tradition. It birthed our culture. We honor it. We like Europe. We want more Europeans to come to America, and we want to nudge them, force them, cajole them, plead with them to spend money to protect themselves so Vladimir Putin is deterred and he doesn’t attack them and then divert all of our resources over to Europe while China, in conjunction with Putin, stages a simultaneous attack on Taiwan.
“But that’s what will happen if you don’t defend yourself.”
And they had a secret little meeting saying:
“Oh my gosh, we can’t have trade surpluses with the United States anymore? It’s going to be reciprocal? Zero? Oh, he’s telling us that China is taking advantage of us? He’s saying that his open borders, no more illegal immigration, and getting rid of DEI is a good formula for us? We should drill like he did? Oh my gosh, that’s an insult. We can’t take that.”
Well, what are you going to do about it? Nothing.
Nothing.
Get your Eurofighter. Get the Eurofighter and every—
Oh, I’m sorry, you canceled the Eurofighter.
Get Leopard tanks and every—
Oh, I’m sorry, you only had nine that worked at the beginning of the Ukraine war.
Let’s get your huge drone fleet.
Oh, I’m sorry, it’s Ukraine’s huge drone fleet, not yours.
So, they have a lot of problems.
I like Europe. I like the Europeans. I like the Germans, the French, the British. Americans like them all. But they will never like us if they’re dependent on us.
In other words, if they think it’s their birthright to be subsidized in their defense, subsidized in their trade, subsidized in their rhetoric, and that allows them to pursue their utopian socialist dreams.
I mean, basically the country is run by [Zohran] Mamdanis and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortezs and [Darializa Avila] Chevaliers. That’s who runs Europe—socialists.