The question comes to me from more and more Europeans these days: “Do you still support Donald Trump after all of this?”
By “all of this,” they usually mean the bizarre and destructive tariffs regime the White House rolled out in April, on what Trump called “Liberation Day.” But there is more, of course: Trump’s harsh deportation regime against illegal migrants, his substantive assault on universities, his wrecking of the NATO alliance, his weird trolling of Canada (“America’s 51st State”) and Denmark, over Greenland, et cetera.
My answer is: Yes, I agree that most of this has been troubling, some more than others. So why do I, as an American conservative, still back Trump? The answer is simple: what was, and what is, the alternative? Not the ideal alternative, but the real-world alternative.
Consider where America was before Trump’s re-election.
The American establishment was personified by Joe Biden, a senile old man who, as is now clear, was a puppet controlled by his advisers. The federal government became the engine for forcing DEI on everyone, including core institutions, like the U.S. military.
Advancing transgenderism—which Biden once called “the civil rights issue of our time”—became a crusade. He named a male-to-female transgender, Rachel Levine, to a senior-level post in his health department. Levine was later discovered to have successfully lobbied global transgender health policy makers to lower the age for allowing minors to have transgender surgeries, despite scientific evidence warning against it.
Biden continued the Democratic policy of using diplomacy and U.S.-funded NGOs to advance LGBT rights and neoliberal policy goals throughout the world. Elon Musk’s DOGE investigation revealed that Washington funded activist groups that pushed color revolution-style regime change on many nations, including U.S. allies like Hungary.
Under the Biden administration, America’s southern border was wide open. At least 10 million migrants crossed it illegally, though the true number will never be known. Biden claimed that securing the border would be an enormously complex undertaking—this, to justify doing little or nothing about it. Funny, but Donald Trump managed to reduce illegal crossings to almost nothing within three months of taking office in January.
And, when Biden proved to be too wrecked by his age to run a competent presidential campaign, the Democratic machine anointed Kamala Harris, a woke California nitwit, to replace him. Old-school Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz endorsed Harris, revealing that what really mattered to GOP establishmentarians like them was preserving the corrupt system, no matter who runs it.
It’s easy to lose sight of how bad things were in America before Trump’s re-election. The entire system had become decadent and unresponsive to the actual problems facing the American people. Voters last November were not offered a choice that included an unnamed ideal national-conservative politician, but one between Trump and Harris. Between the known devil of the neoliberal status quo, and Donald Trump, the choice for many of us was clear. That Trump is proving to be in some ways a devil himself was always part of the risk.
This has all been a terrible shock for Europe. All I can say is: it has only just begun. That is not a comment about Trump’s policies, but about European political realities.
This week in Germany, incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered an unprecedented humiliation when he failed to win parliamentary approval on the first ballot. Meanwhile, the German government recently moved to all but outlaw the country’s most popular political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), chiefly because the party opposes mass migration.The German elites exemplify a harsh truth that we are all coming to understand about liberal elites of both the Left and the Right: if it comes down to it, liberal democrats will choose liberalism over democracy every time.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the once-mighty Conservative Party continues staggering along its own path to oblivion. In recent local elections, the Tories were wiped out by Reform candidates. Many British voters have lost faith in both the traditional parties, in large part because neither one gives a toss about stopping wave after wave of illegal migration. It has been fairly observed that Reform leader Nigel Farage doesn’t seem to have much of a plan for governing. To which the answer might be the same one that Trump voters gave: Compared to who?
In France, the establishment recently attempted to knock Marine Le Pen out of the running for the 2027 presidency with conviction on corruption charges—this, despite some insiders at the European parliament saying that what Le Pen was found guilty of is common practice among all parties there.
Talking to ordinary French voters is bracing. Last weekend in Budapest, two expatriated French women told me they are much safer living in Malmö, though it is beset with migrant gang violence, than back home in France.
It is gradually dawning on European publics that their societies are in serious crisis, that their elites don’t care about them, and cannot be trusted to make their lives better. Europeans are not MAGA types, to be sure, but they are moving towards similar conclusions as Trump voters in America: a sound rejection of the establishment status quo. In the months and years to come, we may see electoral majorities decide that the future they cannot predict is a better bet than more of the same.
And if they do, then Europeans will understand why even Americans like me who have our doubts about Donald Trump stick with him. If the only politician who will fight for people like us against an establishment that doesn’t care is a bit crazy and chaotic, well, breaking the stranglehold of neoliberal elites might be worth the mess.
Why Trump?
U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, in Washington, DC, on May 5, 2025.
Photo: Alex Wroblewski / AFP
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The question comes to me from more and more Europeans these days: “Do you still support Donald Trump after all of this?”
By “all of this,” they usually mean the bizarre and destructive tariffs regime the White House rolled out in April, on what Trump called “Liberation Day.” But there is more, of course: Trump’s harsh deportation regime against illegal migrants, his substantive assault on universities, his wrecking of the NATO alliance, his weird trolling of Canada (“America’s 51st State”) and Denmark, over Greenland, et cetera.
My answer is: Yes, I agree that most of this has been troubling, some more than others. So why do I, as an American conservative, still back Trump? The answer is simple: what was, and what is, the alternative? Not the ideal alternative, but the real-world alternative.
Consider where America was before Trump’s re-election.
The American establishment was personified by Joe Biden, a senile old man who, as is now clear, was a puppet controlled by his advisers. The federal government became the engine for forcing DEI on everyone, including core institutions, like the U.S. military.
Advancing transgenderism—which Biden once called “the civil rights issue of our time”—became a crusade. He named a male-to-female transgender, Rachel Levine, to a senior-level post in his health department. Levine was later discovered to have successfully lobbied global transgender health policy makers to lower the age for allowing minors to have transgender surgeries, despite scientific evidence warning against it.
Biden continued the Democratic policy of using diplomacy and U.S.-funded NGOs to advance LGBT rights and neoliberal policy goals throughout the world. Elon Musk’s DOGE investigation revealed that Washington funded activist groups that pushed color revolution-style regime change on many nations, including U.S. allies like Hungary.
Under the Biden administration, America’s southern border was wide open. At least 10 million migrants crossed it illegally, though the true number will never be known. Biden claimed that securing the border would be an enormously complex undertaking—this, to justify doing little or nothing about it. Funny, but Donald Trump managed to reduce illegal crossings to almost nothing within three months of taking office in January.
And, when Biden proved to be too wrecked by his age to run a competent presidential campaign, the Democratic machine anointed Kamala Harris, a woke California nitwit, to replace him. Old-school Republicans like former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz endorsed Harris, revealing that what really mattered to GOP establishmentarians like them was preserving the corrupt system, no matter who runs it.
It’s easy to lose sight of how bad things were in America before Trump’s re-election. The entire system had become decadent and unresponsive to the actual problems facing the American people. Voters last November were not offered a choice that included an unnamed ideal national-conservative politician, but one between Trump and Harris. Between the known devil of the neoliberal status quo, and Donald Trump, the choice for many of us was clear. That Trump is proving to be in some ways a devil himself was always part of the risk.
This has all been a terrible shock for Europe. All I can say is: it has only just begun. That is not a comment about Trump’s policies, but about European political realities.
This week in Germany, incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered an unprecedented humiliation when he failed to win parliamentary approval on the first ballot. Meanwhile, the German government recently moved to all but outlaw the country’s most popular political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), chiefly because the party opposes mass migration.The German elites exemplify a harsh truth that we are all coming to understand about liberal elites of both the Left and the Right: if it comes down to it, liberal democrats will choose liberalism over democracy every time.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the once-mighty Conservative Party continues staggering along its own path to oblivion. In recent local elections, the Tories were wiped out by Reform candidates. Many British voters have lost faith in both the traditional parties, in large part because neither one gives a toss about stopping wave after wave of illegal migration. It has been fairly observed that Reform leader Nigel Farage doesn’t seem to have much of a plan for governing. To which the answer might be the same one that Trump voters gave: Compared to who?
In France, the establishment recently attempted to knock Marine Le Pen out of the running for the 2027 presidency with conviction on corruption charges—this, despite some insiders at the European parliament saying that what Le Pen was found guilty of is common practice among all parties there.
Talking to ordinary French voters is bracing. Last weekend in Budapest, two expatriated French women told me they are much safer living in Malmö, though it is beset with migrant gang violence, than back home in France.
It is gradually dawning on European publics that their societies are in serious crisis, that their elites don’t care about them, and cannot be trusted to make their lives better. Europeans are not MAGA types, to be sure, but they are moving towards similar conclusions as Trump voters in America: a sound rejection of the establishment status quo. In the months and years to come, we may see electoral majorities decide that the future they cannot predict is a better bet than more of the same.
And if they do, then Europeans will understand why even Americans like me who have our doubts about Donald Trump stick with him. If the only politician who will fight for people like us against an establishment that doesn’t care is a bit crazy and chaotic, well, breaking the stranglehold of neoliberal elites might be worth the mess.
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