Alarming steps by US allies show who Trump really serves

Donald Trump is doing something to America that no foreign adversary has ever managed, something Vladimir Putin’s been dreaming about for decades: he’s convincing our oldest and closest allies, countries we fought wars to defend and liberate, and with whom we share a democratic system of government, that the United States can’t be trusted.

For example, France’s government just announced it’s ripping U.S. videoconferencing platforms — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and others — out of its government offices nationwide and replacing them with a new French-created system called “Visio.”

That’s roughly 2.5 million French public employees who’ll no longer be using American digital products because the French have concluded that U.S. tech — and the Silicon Valley billionaires’ pathetic fealty to Trump, bringing him bribes and gifts and groveling in front of him — is a national security risk.

And it’s not just France: the German state of Schleswig‑Holstein just moved 44,000 employees off Microsoft and over to an open-source platform, and is now considering replacing Windows with Linux. They also dumped Microsoft’s SharePoint file-sharing system, going with open source Nextcloud.

We’re no longer seen as a reliable partner: many of our former allies now view us as a potential enemy.

Denmark’s government, Swiss authorities, Austria, and other European countries are exploring or implementing similar moves. The EU’s senior official for tech sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, said that Europe’s dependence on American technology “can be weaponized against us.” As ABC News reported:

“A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump.

“The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel [International Criminal Court’s prosecutor Karim Asad Ahmad] Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a ‘kill switch’ that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will.”

It’s the same reason Canada is reconsidering purchasing F-35s from America, which would be another major economic and strategic blow to us. Under a leader as corrupt, mentally ill, and erratic as Trump, few countries are willing to have their essential tech or defense infrastructure vulnerable to his whims and tantrums.

Even more shocking, the National Security Deskreports:

“In a stunning shift announced today, NATO stripped the United States of command of all three of its operational‑level Joint Force Commands — the four‑star headquarters responsible for leading the Alliance in crisis and war.

“For the first time since NATO’s founding, every major operational command will now be led by European officers. The United Kingdom will assume command of JFC Norfolk, Italy will take over JFC Naples, and Germany and Poland will rotate leadership of JFC Brunssum. SACEUR remains American for now, but only symbolically; today’s tectonic move makes a future European SACEUR a matter of timing, not theory.”

This isn’t about Europeans “hating America” any more than than No Kings protestors calling out Trump’s fascist actions means they despise our country.

Quite simply, European leaders — like millions of Americans — are looking at Trump’s naked embrace of Putin, his open contempt for democracy, and his casual threats against NATO allies and concluding that no critical tech or defense system should ever again depend on the whims of this narcissistic wannabe American strongman.

Speaking of wannabe strongmen, ABC added:

“Billionaire Elon Musk is also a factor. Officials worry about relying on his Starlink satellite internet system...”

Analysts now explicitly warn that Trump’s and his toadies’ hostility to the EU and his willingness to weaponize sanctions and economic tools have made Silicon Valley firms look more like extensions of an unpredictable strongman who ignores the law, rather than the neutral digital providers they’ve historically positioned themselves as.

After all, if you’re a European defense or interior minister, you have to ask yourself: what happens to our communications and data if Trump wakes up pissed off at us one morning because we didn’t leap high enough when he yelled “Jump!”

Even more distressing, the damage isn’t just confined to tech. It’s hitting the very heart of the Western alliance system — which we largely created — that has kept relative peace since World War II. It’s been Putin’s goal for decades, and now he’s getting exactly what he wants from Trump.

When Trump said he would “encourage” Russia to attack NATO allies that, he claimed, weren’t “paying up,” European leaders didn’t shrug it off as a joke. European Council President Charles Michel called the comments “reckless,” correctly saying that such statements “serve only Putin’s interest” and undermine the core promise of mutual defense. Of course, serving Putin’s — rather than America’s — interests is exactly what Trump has been doing for a decade now.

Even NATO’s Secretary General felt compelled, once again, to publicly restate that Article 5 — the pledge that an attack on one is an attack on all — remains “ironclad,” slapping down the President of the United States.

As Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said in response to Trump threatening to unleash Putin on Europe:

“He’s more interested in aggrandizing himself and pleasing Putin than protecting our allies. It would be enough to make Reagan ill.”

Schiff’s sentiments were echoed by Charles Michel, the president of the European Council:

“Reckless statements on #NATO’s security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putin’s interest. They do not bring more security or peace to the world. On the contrary, they reemphasize the need for the #EU to urgently further develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense.”

So, here we are: the head of NATO and the head of the European Council reduced to reassuring the world that America’s president doesn’t speak for the alliance when he invites Russia to attack its members. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, couldn’t have come up with something more bizarre.

European security analysts now talk openly about “low trust” and “ruptures and new realities” in their relations with the United States. One EU security study notes that Trump has shown “elements of active hostility against the European project,” highlighting his bizarre, paranoid claim that the EU was set up to “screw” the US, as well as his refusal to rule out the use of force to annex Greenland.

And now Trump has his emissary visiting rightwing and neo-Nazi parties and think tanks in Europe, offering them American cash and support. He and Putin appear totally committed to making the world safe for dictators and oligarchs by damaging the democracies of the world.

America’s and democracy’s enemies, of course, are thrilled. As one European think‑tank piece put it bluntly, Trump’s rhetoric is “a gift to Putin.” When the president of the United States trashes NATO, praises autocrats, and undermines the EU while half of Ukraine is being tormented by brutal cold, the man in the Kremlin doesn’t have to spend a ruble to fracture the West. Trump, like a dutiful dog, is doing it for him.

And this isn’t just elite hand‑wringing at the level of governments and ministers; ordinary Europeans are recalibrating their relationship with America, too. Surveys over the past year show European opinions of the United States dropping sharply, a reality we also see in the collapse of European vacationers to the United States.

One EU institute reports that nearly three‑quarters of Europeans now see the United States as a “somewhat or very unreliable” partner now, with average Germans among the most skeptical.

A broader survey across Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Spain, and Italy found U.S. favorability down, sometimes by double digits, with only about one-in-ten respondents expressing real trust in Trump’s America to defend them.

Another poll summarized by Politico found that even a majority of Canadians now see the US as a “negative global force,” driven largely by Trump’s erratic behavior and his obsession with self-enrichment, having already collected an estimated $4 billion for himself and his family since he was sworn to office.

Put simply, our allies are doing what any rational nation would do when a key partner goes rogue: they’re hedging.

They’re hedging by building their own tech infrastructure, so that Trump can’t flip a switch and cut off vital services or demand back-doors into their communications systems or share information with Putin. So Trump can’t hand them over to Putin the way he is Ukraine. They’re hedging by embracing “strategic autonomy,” aka European defense capabilities that don’t rely on Washington or anybody in America.

Meanwhile, here at home, Trump and his lickspittle Republicans are busily transforming America into exactly the kind of oligarchic, strongman system our grandparents fought World War II to stop.

He’s pardoned insurrectionists, is purging institutions and installing loyalists, and covering up the child-rape crimes of his billionaire friends, all while aligning himself — and, thus, America — with oligarchs and dictators abroad.

When you combine that internal authoritarian drift with external contempt for allies and admiration for Putin, you get the worst of all worlds: a United States that can no longer credibly lead democratic nations and may increasingly act as a spoiler on behalf of strongmen, grifters, and oligarchs worldwide. And, of course, on behalf of Putin.

Trump promised to “make America great again.” Instead, he’s teaching the rest of the free world that they need to live without us. All to our and our children’s detriment.

• Thom Hartmann is a New York Times best-selling author and SiriusXM talk show host. His Substack can be found here.