Anti-Trumpism Unites Europe

Europe’s nationalist right rejoiced when Donald Trump was first elected in 2016. It celebrated again when he returned to the White House last year. His triumph was seen as a vindication of the anti-immigrant, anti-woke platforms that have been gaining momentum on their side of the Atlantic, too.

But over the past year, Trump’s aggressive tariffs, his threats to invade Greenland, his war on Iran — and the energy crisis it has spawned — not to mention his attacks on the pope, have changed that.

Today my colleague Jason Horowitz, our Madrid bureau chief, writes about how Trump’s brand is now so toxic in Europe that left-wingers and conservatives are both opposing him.

Why so many leaders in Europe want to stand up to Trump

By Jason Horowitz

He’s the newly anointed leader of the global left.

She’s a pioneer of Europe’s new nationalist right.

Even though Pedro Sánchez of Spain and Giorgia Meloni of Italy are two European prime ministers on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, last week they both found themselves walking the same path to political survival: standing up to President Trump.

It’s a sign of just how low Trump’s standing in Europe has fallen.

Trump as life preserver

In Spain, Sánchez has emerged as the darling of the international left for his early-and-often opposition to Trump, whether it be the American president’s tariff threats, his demands for increased military spending, his Greenland ambitions or, most critically, his war in Iran.

“No to war,” Sánchez bellowed at a conference in Barcelona that I attended over the weekend. He spoke to a rapturous crowd consisting of his Spanish base, but also liberal leaders from Europe, South America, Africa and the United States. “Shame on those who defend the privileges of the elites,” he said, “who support war.”

But as many Spanish analysts have pointed out, Sánchez’s standing up to Trump, and Trump’s repeated put-downs of Sánchez, have served not only to elevate the prime minister’s stature abroad, but to distract from his troubles at home. Sánchez’s former political associates are facing embarrassing corruption scandals and trials in the Spanish Supreme Court this month. (They say that they are innocent, and Sánchez himself is not implicated.)

Sánchez had been sinking in polls since the summer. But Trump has become a life preserver. The more Sánchez seeks to distance Spain from the U.S., the better his poll numbers look. Since taking on Trump, he is stirring enthusiasm among a base he desperately needs to mobilize. His popularity is swelling.

Trump as albatross

Something not dissimilar is playing out across the Mediterranean Sea, in Italy.

Sánchez and Meloni don’t have much in common politically. She’s the standard-bearer of a hard-right European ideology that had long embraced Trump for his nationalism, opposition to immigration and disdain for liberal identity politics. For years, Meloni had sought leverage in Europe as a sort of right-wing bridge to Trump.

And yet last week, she found herself traveling the same Trump-divergent road.

Meloni recently lost a referendum that many analysts attributed to her close association with Trump. His popularity in Italy has plummeted since he threatened tariffs, including on pasta, and launched the war in Iran.

Then Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV.

In Catholic Italy, where the Vatican matters, a choice between taking the side of a popular pope standing up for peace in a war that most Italians oppose and an American president digging popularity ditches isn’t much of a choice at all. Meloni, who has governed more as a pragmatist than an ideologue, took the pope’s side.

“I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable,” Meloni said.

Trump did the hard work for Meloni in response, attacking her as disloyal, not the person he thought he knew. For Meloni, who, like Sánchez, is expected to face elections next year, the breakup message was essentially a political gift.

A toxic American president

That distance from Trump is a political imperative for such diametrically ideological opposites as Sánchez and Meloni demonstrates how toxic the American president has become across the continent.

On the left, Trump has been a boogeyman from Day 1, and Sánchez has clearly made the calculation that the political benefits of running hard against the American president are worth whatever blowback may come. His advisers say the country, which has a growing economy, a trade surplus with the United States and the protection of the European Union when it comes to trade agreements, is well equipped for any reprisals. Trump is so unpopular that he is more useful to Sánchez as a foil than a friend.

On the other hand, European conservatives for years saw Trump as an energizing figure, someone who broke with taboos against the far-right, who created momentum as they sought to dismantle the European Union and carry out more nationalist agendas back home.

But the distance sought by Meloni suggests that may be changing.

In Britain, Nigel Farage, a onetime Trump fan, is increasingly critical of him. A leading figure in Germany’s far-right AfD party called him a “millstone.” In France, leaders of the National Rally have explicitly called for distance. Now it seems that Meloni, too, has decided he is a bridge too far.

And if she wanted more evidence that Trump’s embrace could be electorally unhelpful, she would need to look no further than Hungary, where, despite good tidings from Trump and a personal visit from Vice President JD Vance, Meloni’s ally, Viktor Orban, recently lost in a landslide.

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