How An Insulted Europe Can Hit the Felon

The Felon has seemingly gone out of his way to alienate the United Sates long time European allies - perhaps at the direction of Vladimir Putin - through insults to members of the European military who died in Afghanistan, tariffs, and threats that Europe is on its own for military defense. None of these efforts to deride and alienate allies have benefitted the United States in any way and, instead of making America stronger, are having the opposite effect.  Meanwhile, the Felon struts around lime a mini-me Mussolini and his ICE thugs' assaults on undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike resemble the behavior of fascist regimes from the 1930's.  What can European nations do to counter the Felon's attacks on their security and economic wellbeing? There are the European threats to use an economic "bazooka" that would greatly harm American international businesses, especially tech companies, the cancelation of orders of military hardware from U.S. corporations, and perhaps a move that would hit at the Felon's always fragile ego: a boycott of the World Cup which has many games scheduled in the United States in addition to those in Mexico and Canada (two other nations the Felon has insulted and alienated).  Reportedly, many would be attendees at the World Cup in the United States are canceling their trips to a country where rogue ICE agents could abuse foreign tourists.  If European teams boycott the World Cup - a definite vanity project of the Felon - the event could become a debacle and embarrassment to the orange occupant of the White House. A piece in The New Republic looks at the situation: 

Near the village of Combe Hay, a few miles south of Bath (and close to where I live), there is a sloping field that has been preserved as a wildflower meadow. At the moment, it’s as bleak as the winter weather, but in a few weeks’ time there will be a scattering of primroses and other first signs of spring. In the middle of the meadow is a young oak tree, now about 20 feet high, at whose foot is a small enamel tablet, which reads:

This tree was planted | in loving memory of | Lt. David A.G. Boyce | 1st Queen’s Dragoon Guards | Killed in action in | Helmand Province Afghanistan | 17 November 2011 | Aged 25

I thought of David Boyce when I heard the president of the United States say that British and European troops had “stayed a little off the front lines” during the Afghan War. And I also wondered how Boyce’s family must have felt.

We’ve all had plenty of opportunities to get used to Donald Trump’s outbursts, his malignity and malice combined with complete unpredictability. In his weird way, he will say or do anything, however hysterical or irrational, however offensive to friend as well as foe. Of course he has no sense of decency, but he has no sense of irony, either, or sense of the ridiculous. The Great Draft Dodger never hesitates to deride people who have fought and died in action.

European leaders—all of them, really, but Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, most of all—have tried dealing with Trump through what the Bible calls the soft answer that turneth away wrath, not to say with gross flattery. Starmer thought he could win Trump’s friendship by inviting him to the grotesque “state visit” last September, when the president was sealed inside a security cocoon around Windsor Castle lest he should be seen in public and jeered at. Once again, Trump displayed all the true military swagger and bluster of a draft dodger, standing stiffly to attention and saluting as the Foot Guards marched past, while King Charles, who has actually served in uniform in the Royal Navy, knew not to salute.

And then there was the grandiose state dinner, with a fascinating cast list, from Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff (of course) to Rupert Murdoch and Sam Altman. Two royal families were well represented, with the king’s wife, sister, and elder son, and the president’s current wife, daughter, son-in-law, wife’s chief of staff, and crypto czar.

It was British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who said that, when dealing with monarchy, you must lay on the flattery with a trowel, as he did so successfully with Queen Victoria. It has finally dawned on Disraeli’s successor at 10 Downing Street that, however much Trump may see himself as a kind of royalty, the trowel doesn’t work with him. You can lick Trump’s boots, and he’ll still kick you in the teeth. Now the worm turned at last. As a spasm of disgust was felt in England, with the mothers or widows of soldiers who’d fallen in Afghanistan saying in blunt terms what they thought of Trump’s “a little off the front lines,” Starmer himself called those words “appalling.” 

Of course, Trump can say something outrageous and then immediately contradict himself, as he did the next day when he said, “The GREAT and very BRAVE soldiers of the United Kingdom will always be with the United States of America! In Afghanistan, 457 died.… The U.K. Military, with tremendous Heart and Soul, is second to none (except for the U.S.A.!). We love you all, and always will! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

There might have been something behind the Donald’s latest tergiversation. A return visit to the United States by the king and queen this year is planned, or at least penciled in. . . . . Had Trump’s “a little off the front lines” been allowed to stand, it’s hard to see how the royal visit could have gone ahead. There seems to have been a discreet communication through channels from Buckingham Palace to the White House that prompted the insincere and over-effusive “tremendous Heart and Soul.”

We had already seen a masterpiece of Trumpery in his rambling and incoherent speech at Davos. He might have to take Greenland by force, or then again he wasn’t going to use force. He might have to wage ferocious tariff war on Europe, but then on a whim he said he wouldn’t be using tariffs. Not to mention his insisting that control of Greenland was essential for American interests, while repeatedly referring to it as “Iceland.”

Whatever with Greenland, Ukraine, or the Gaza Riviera, we English and other Europeans watch from afar with horror events in Minneapolis and elsewhere in America. There’s an acute apprehension that a grave and possibly irrevocable change is coming over your country. It has never seemed to me helpful to compare Donald Trump with Adolf Hitler—Trump quite lacks Hitler’s single-mindedness—or aver that the United States will become a fascist country, although watching the ICE goon squads at work this month, there’s a hint of the squadristi fascisti, Mussolini’s thugs who used to beat up his opponents.

But it seems more than possible that the United States will cease to be a Rechtsstaat, a country governed by a rule of laws not men, and that it might not only drift away from the Atlantic Alliance but cease to be part of the comity of those we can call, with all their faults and hypocrisies, civilized nations. To put it bluntly, we can now imagine the U.S. as an international pariah.

Do we have any recourse? Even after Trump’s palinode with respect to British soldiery, it might be very difficult for the royal visit to go ahead while innocent people are being shot on the streets of America. There can’t be any doubt that King Charles finds Trump acutely distasteful and would be relieved if his visit were postponed for as long as possible, if not indefinitely.

And there’s one other possibility. This summer’s World Cup is being played in North America, some games in Mexico and some in Canada but most in the U.S., for the second time following the 1994 World Cup. A condition of granting the World Cup to the U.S. that year was that a proper domestic soccer league should be set up in the country.

One American won’t be attending the Super Bowl: Trump has announced that Santa Clara is too far away (and California is hostile territory). But he’s longing to strut his stuff at the World Cup. The Nobel Peace Prize has so far eluded him, to his great rage, as he told a bemused Norwegian prime minister. And yet he had already received a “peace prize” from the hands of Gianni Infantino, the smirking scoundrel who is head of FIFA, the body that controls international football.

It has been suggested that European fans might boycott the World Cup—and maybe more than fans. If London bookmakers’ odds are any guide, eight out of 10 of the best teams in the competition are from Europe. Should Trump renew his threat to Greenland, they could withdraw and wreck the tournament. There are precedents, after all. In 1980, the United States led many other countries that boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow after the (as it happened ill-advised and ill-fated) Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

This would be an unhappy outcome, and not very nice for all concerned. But then Europe has tried being nice with Trump, and look how well it has worked.