https://www.frontpagemag.com/nevertrump-european-scolds-president-trump/
Last week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Denmark, Nato Secretary General, and fervent supporter of the “rules based international order,” to which Rasmussen has “dedicated much of [his] life,” and that functions as a globalist, antinationalist foreign policy talisman that for decades U.S. taxpayers have financed.
Having returned to the White House, Trump is once again challenging that order with his America first policies and impatience with our allies’ refusal to share the cost of being the “world’s policeman.” Rasmussen fears Trump has “gone rogue” and “no longer exercises his authority over geopolitical gangsters, or becomes abusive toward the world’s most steadfast rule followers” ––by which he means Europeans, especially the Nato nations.
In other words, stale NeverTrump clichés we’ve been hearing since 2016––and much longer when targets were conservative Republicans who challenged “we are the world” globalism. But what it’s really all about is a simple principle of that order: “Let you Yanks and the bad guy fight––and you pick up the bill.” Now Europeans are miffed because we again have a president who first looks to his own countrymen and their interests ahead of those of international oligarchs, plutocrats, and cognitive elites who malign the U.S. and its citizens who don’t get in line with the globalist program, as the Democrats have.
Another bad NeverTrump habit Rasmussen indulges was identified by commentator Salena Zito in 2016: When Trump uses his trademark hyperbolic bluster, the press and the Dems “take him literally but not seriously,” whereas his supporters “take him seriously but not literally.” They understand that such exaggerations, insults, and bravado are tools for getting international attention, gaining leverage, and creating uncertainty in our adversaries, which often include our nominal allies.