BERLIN — “Unacceptable.” “Intolerable.” A “hostile act.” A “mistake.”
For days, negative reactions to President Donald Trump’s threats to take over Greenland rained down from across Europe — not just from mainstream politicians who have long drawn Trump’s ire but also from the MAGA-cheering leaders of nationalist, anti-immigration parties who have generally been among Trump’s biggest fans.
Trump said late Wednesday that he had reached the “framework” of a deal on Greenland and dropped his threat of imposing tariffs on countries that are standing in his way of acquiring the Arctic territory. Details were scant, but even if the immediate crisis abates, the wave of condemnation from the European far right highlighted the limits of Trump’s with-me-or-against-me politics — and a key obstacle to nationalist politicians and parties building cross-border partnerships.
On some issues, “America First,” necessarily means “Germany Second” or “Denmark Thirty-Second” — as ideological alliances suddenly come into conflict with diverging national, or personal, interests.
“Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, said last week, adding that Trump had pledged “not to interfere in other countries” and would now need to “explain to his own voters” why he was meddling in both Venezuela and Greenland.
Weidel’s co-party leader, Tino Chrupalla, decried Trump’s “Wild West methods,” which he called “unacceptable.”
In France, Jordan Bardella, leader of the far-right National Rally party, denounced Trump’s “threats against the sovereignty of a state” as “intolerable.” In Britain, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage called Trump’s tariff threat “a very hostile act.” And Italy’s conservative prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, called the tariff proposal a “mistake.”
Mattias Karlsson, a member of parliament in Sweden and former leader of the right-wing, nationalist Sweden Democrats, perhaps put it most memorably. “Trump increasingly resembles a reverse King Midas. Everything he touches turns to [feces],” Karlsson posted on X, using a more plainspoken term.
The critiques mark a notable reversal after the Trump administration worked hard over the president’s first year in office to cultivate relationships with Europe’s right-wing parties and boost them in elections.
Last month, the administration released a national security strategy warning that Europe was at risk of “civilizational erasure” because of migration and praising the rise of anti-immigrant parties, stating: “The growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
The criticism from the AfD leaders was particularly striking. The party has gone out of its way in recent months to build ties to Trump and his inner circle, with AfD members of parliament making increasingly frequent trips to Washington.
Leaders of the AfD, which has been labeled a right-wing extremist group by the German domestic intelligence agency, say they are deliberately following Trump’s playbook both to win power as a right-wing insurgent movement and to implement their agenda after taking control of government.
The break between Trump’s MAGA movement and Europe’s hard right highlights a fundamental tension in their relationship: For all their mutual support and perceived sense that they are on the same team — fighting the woke, liberal mainstream — their interests often don’t align. A nationalist party can hardly wear that label if it supports aggressive policies by another nation that undermine its own country’s finances or security.
“For them, sovereignty and national borders are very important,” Sudha David-Wilp, a vice president of the German Marshall Fund policy institute, who is based in Berlin and Washington, said of the AfD. “And so for the United States to say it can just come in and change ownership of territory, that to them is probably anathema and undermines their whole view on the international system.”
It also doesn’t help that Trump is deeply unpopular with European voters. A poll of Western European countries from YouGov last month found that Trump had the approval of 7 percent of Danes, 15 percent of Germans and 18 percent of Britons. His best results came in Italy, Spain and France, where he had 19 percent support in each country.
Even among backers of the populist parties in these countries, Trump is hardly a unifying figure. Polling has found that only about one-third of supporters of Germany’s AfD and France’s National Rally view Trump positively.
“They have a pulse on the electorate,” David-Wilp said of the AfD, “and polls are showing that across the spectrum, there is no appetite for President Trump in Europe and in Germany.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Trump backed away from his threat to seize Greenland by force. But clear damage has been done. The mere threat of a takeover and of new tariffs — despite having agreed to a trade deal with the European Union last year — rattled even Trump’s closest allies.
“Increasing tariffs on those nations that have chosen to contribute to Greenland’s security is, in my opinion, a mistake, and I obviously disagree,” Meloni said. The Italian prime minister has generally maintained good relations with Trump, who once called her “beautiful,” but she is also a supporter of European institutions and has backed Denmark’s sovereign rights in Greenland and the right of European countries to send soldiers there.
“The willingness by some European countries to send troops, participating in a greater security, should be read that way — not as an action against the U.S., but rather against other actors,” Meloni said.
Farage, one of Trump’s most prominent cheerleaders in British politics, said tariffs would be “very, very hurtful” to the British economy. Farage, who was a champion of Brexit, has long boasted of his access to Trump’s circle, said he intended to raise the issue personally with the U.S. administration.
Farage’s opposition to the tariffs brought him into rare alliance with British parties across the political spectrum. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, of Labour, has described Trump’s proposal as “completely wrong,” while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch dismissed it as a “terrible idea.”
Bardella, the National Rally party’s likely 2027 presidential candidate in France, wrote Tuesday on X: “Donald Trump presents us with a clear choice: accept vassalage, or reclaim our status as sovereign actors, capable of defending our interests and our integrity.” Bardella called on the European Union to suspend its trade deal with the United States over the Greenland crisis and he described Trump’s tariff threats as “commercial blackmail.”
Some European leaders, including on the right, have said that their efforts to make friends with Trump have failed and that it is time to stand up to him.
“We tried to appease the new president in the White House,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, a conservative nationalist who leads a politically diverse government coalition, said Tuesday. “But now, so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect — being a happy vassal is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else.”
Anthony Faiola in Rome, Steve Hendrix in London and Ellen Francis in Brussels contributed to this report.
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