A Dose of Their Own Medicine : From Anti-America to Anti-Europe

 Remember when the Germans used to laugh at Trump's UN speech? What about Macron and Trudeau telling jokes about him in a G7 meeting?

For decades, Europe has nursed a quiet disdain for its brash cousin across the Atlantic, a simmering anti-Americanism that bubbles up in subtle sneers and outright scorn. It’s the eye-roll at American tourists clogging Paris’s Champs-Élysées, their fanny packs and loud voices clashing with the city’s refined air—over 2.5 million visited France alone in 2023, per France’s tourism board, often branded as “culturally oblivious” by locals. It’s the snickers at America’s obsession with supersized fast food, from the 64-ounce sodas mocked in London pubs to the viral French memes of “le Big Mac” as a symbol of excess—McDonald’s sold 1.9 billion meals in Europe in 2024, yet the continent still recoils at the stereotype. And it’s the head-shaking over cultural quirks like reality TV overload—think Jersey Shore reruns dubbed “trashy Americana” in Berlin bars—or the U.S.’s gun-toting bravado, with Europe’s 5.7 civilian firearms per 100 people paling against America’s 120.5, per the 2023 Small Arms Survey.

This antipathy isn’t just petty jabs. It’s flared into mass protests, like the 2003 marches across London, Paris, and Rome—over a million strong, per BBC archives—against the U.S.-led Iraq invasion, with effigies of George W. Bush torched amid chants of “Yankee go home.” It’s the intellectual disdain from Europe’s left, decrying American capitalism as a soulless machine—France’s Le Monde famously dubbed Wall Street “the devil’s playground” in a 2011 editorial after the financial crisis. Even Hollywood, a global juggernaut, gets flak: a 2022 Guardian column sneered at Avengers: Endgame as “cinematic junk food,” lamenting America’s cultural imperialism. From mocking Thanksgiving’s turkey obsession to scoffing at cheerleaders as a bizarre export—banned in Germany’s schools for “objectification,” per a 2019 DW report—Europe’s anti-Americanism has marinated in a mix of superiority and resentment, often cloaked as moral high ground.

Now, the tables are turning. In the digital shadows of encrypted messaging apps, a candid exchange has ignited a firestorm, peeling back the curtain on a burgeoning sentiment within the Trump administration. Vice President JD Vance, alongside Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, vented frustrations over a proposed military strike against Houthi rebels in Yemen—a group throttling the Red Sea, a lifeline for European trade. “I despise bailing out Europe yet again,” Vance typed furiously on Signal, a sentiment Hegseth echoed with disdain for what he called “Europe’s shameless freeloading.” What was meant as a private rant became a public bombshell when Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently included in the chat, exposing a raw hostility that’s rapidly defining Trump’s second term: a profound aversion to Europe.

This isn’t mere political theater—it’s a seismic shift, a transatlantic grudge match dubbed “anti-Europeanism.” It flips the script on the familiar anti-Americanism long simmering in Europe’s progressive circles, where the U.S. is often painted as a brash, capitalist bully. Now, the American right, led by Trump and his loyalists, is crafting its own caricature: Europe as a decaying, elitist continent, sponging off American might while drowning in its own decadence. Both narratives lean on exaggerated tropes, yet each holds a sliver of uncomfortable truth.

Shockwaves Across the Pond

Europeans, even those braced for Trump’s return, are reeling from the pace and venom of this new stance. Within weeks of his January 2025 inauguration, Trump unleashed a salvo of policies that blindsided the continent. Tariffs slammed the European Union as part of a broader trade offensive, while the administration cozied up to Russia, parroting Kremlin lines on Ukraine’s war and sidelining Europe in peace talks with Moscow. Trump’s blunt ultimatum—“If they don’t pay, I won’t protect them”—delivered from the Oval Office in March 2025, underscored a retreat from NATO commitments that’s left allies gasping. “We’re footing their entire defense bill while they fleece us on trade,” he growled, doubling down with a surreal demand for Denmark to cede Greenland to the U.S.

The rhetoric stings as much as the actions. At Munich’s security conference in February 2025, meant to rally against Russian aggression, Vance hijacked the stage with a tirade against European “speech-stifling” regimes, targeting their immigration and abortion policies. Days later, he scoffed at Britain and France’s proposal to deploy peacekeepers to Ukraine, mocking their military relevance—a jab that infuriated nations who’d lost hundreds in Afghanistan alongside U.S. forces. The White House dressing-down of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky in late February was a spectacle of scorn, but Polish President Andrzej Duda’s 10-minute Trump meet-and-greet and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas’ snub by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cemented the pattern: Europe’s leaders are persona non grata.

A Cultural Chasm Widens

This isn’t just about policy—it’s personal. Trump’s inner circle, from billionaire Elon Musk to intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard, sees Europe as a cautionary tale: a geopolitical has-been, economically stagnant, and culturally adrift. They paint a continent abandoning its Christian roots, overrun by Muslim migrants, and teetering on “civilizational collapse,” as Vance warned on Fox News in March 2025. Musk, ever the provocateur, has fueled this narrative, predicting “inevitable civil war” over immigration—a claim most Europeans dismiss as hyperbolic, though integration challenges persist.

Historically, U.S.-Europe friction dates back to America’s founding, when it cast itself as a bold, unshackled contrast to a stifling Old World. The Cold War forged a reluctant unity against the Soviet threat, with the U.S. airlifting aid to Berlin in 1948 and later intervening in the Balkans when Europe faltered. Yet, the Soviet collapse in 1991 exposed fissures. Europe’s hesitation over Iraq in 2003—mocked by Americans with quips like “cheese-eating surrender monkeys”—marked a low point. Historian Robert Kagan’s 2003 maxim, “Americans are from Mars, Europeans from Venus,” captured the divide: Europe clung to multilateral ideals, while the U.S. embraced raw power.

Today’s anti-Europeanism, Kagan argues, is a MAGA mutation, projecting domestic culture wars onto the global stage. “They see Europe as woke America’s twin—tax-happy, borderless liberals,” he says. Tellingly, Trump’s team embraces Europe’s far-right, from Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), while warming to Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a fellow anti-liberal strongman.

The Economics of Resentment

Economics fuels the fire. Trump’s March 2025 announcement of a 25% tariff on car imports—hitting Germany’s auto giants hard—revives a grudge he’s nursed since the 1990s, when he railed against “allies” like Japan and Germany for flooding U.S. markets. “Friends can be worse than enemies,” he mused to reporters, channeling decades of frustration over trade imbalances. The U.S. Census Bureau pegs 2024 EU exports to America at $576 billion, dwarfing the $353 billion flowing the other way—a gap Trump vows to crush.

NATO spending is another flashpoint. The U.S. shoulders 68% of the alliance’s budget, per 2024 NATO figures, while only 11 of 31 members meet the 2% GDP defense spending goal. Conservatives have long griped that Europe’s welfare states—France’s 56% GDP public spending, per Eurostat—thrive under America’s security umbrella. Trump takes it further, viewing the U.S. as a global sucker, a belief cemented by his admiration for autocrats like Putin and Xi Jinping, who shun such burdens.

Europe’s Own Fault Lines

Ironically, Europe’s woes—stagnant growth (1.2% EU GDP rise in 2024, per the IMF), aging populations, and military underfunding—stem from democratic choices. Voters resist deregulation and defense hikes, favoring social safety nets. Immigration, however, is the real tinderbox. The UN reports 5.6 million migrants entered Europe from 2015-2023, sparking a backlash that’s boosted far-right parties like France’s National Rally (24% vote share in 2024) and AfD (19% in Germany’s latest polls). Musk’s dire warnings resonate with MAGA, but Europe’s mainstream sees them as alarmist noise.

The Ukraine pivot terrifies Europe most. Trump’s thaw with Moscow—slashing aid and intelligence to Kyiv, per a March 2025 Washington Post report—threatens to unravel NATO’s eastern flank. European leaders fear Putin’s emboldened aggression, with the EU’s $45 billion in Ukraine aid dwarfed by the U.S.’s prior $75 billion commitment, now in limbo.

A Clash of Visions

For Trump’s base, Europe’s liberal elite—epitomized by the EU’s Brussels bureaucracy—embodies everything they despise: globalism, multiculturalism, and “woke” excess. They cheer the UK’s 2020 Brexit as a model, yearning for a Europe of sovereign nationalists. “They want power ripped from Brussels,” says analyst Mujtaba Rahman. Vance insists his beef is with Europe’s rulers, not its people—a claim echoed by conservative Rod Dreher, who recalls Vance’s love for Paris in 2018, tempered by dismay at its migrant sprawl.

Yet, as Gabbard told Fox News post-Zelensky clash, this is a values war. Trump’s team casts Europe’s support for Ukraine as hypocritical posturing, not a defense of freedom. In their eyes, the real threat isn’t Putin’s tanks—it’s Europe’s progressive rot. As the Atlantic grows colder, this clash promises to reshape alliances, economies, and the global order in ways no Signal chat could foresee.