Ex-insider pinpoints new signs allies are slipping away from Trump's 'oily grasp'
A former Trump administration official says the president's allies are no longer absorbing his bullying in silence — but that carries new risks of antagonism.
President Donald Trump publicly declared British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation this week a full day before Downing Street confirmed it, and former Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor published a column for The i Paper on the new tone foreign leaders have taken toward his boorishness.
"Incredibly, for a good part of his second term so far, U.S. allies absorbed the return of a temperamental Trump with awkward smiles and even more awkward public statements," Taylor wrote. "Perhaps they hoped it would be different this time. They bit their tongues through the insults, flattered him at summits, and told their voters the relationship was just fine."
"What’s new this month – or more pronounced than it was before, and genuinely worth Britain’s attention – is that more of them have stopped taking Trump’s bullying in silence," he added.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, once considered one of Trump's closest European allies, publicly rejected his claim that she had "begged" him for a photo at the G7, telling him to focus on his own popularity and asserting Italian sovereignty over U.S. base demands, and the country's foreign minister then canceled a planned Washington visit.
Separately, after the U.S. signed a memorandum with Iran without consulting Israel, members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet criticized Trump directly, prompting Vice President JD Vance to publicly lecture Israeli officials about their reliance on American military support — language the author says reveals a relationship already fraying.
"I’ve got to say, when your vice president is publicly threatening close friends in a desperate bid to keep them in line, the friendship is already gone," Taylor wrote. "Whether you agree with the Israeli position or not, you don’t talk that way to people if you feel secure in your ability to command loyalty. You talk that way to people who are slipping away from your oily grasp."
This defiance mirrors how Britain's relationship with Trump deteriorated during his first term, Taylor wrote, but he warned against celebrating it.
"A Trump who sees independence as betrayal doesn’t grow chastened," he wrote. "Typically, he grows angrier, and an angry Trump treats anger as a license to destroy. In his first term, at least a dozen times we had to cancel everything on our schedule to rush to the White House to keep Trump from blowing up international agreements or withdrawing from years-old treaties because he felt spited by an ally who didn’t follow his lead or, more often, refused to lather him with praise."
Those grudges caused him to pout about having to go to G7 and NATO meetings, Taylor said, and he raised alarm about Trump's reaction to the emerging defiance against his leadership.
"A lonely and bruised Trump is a far more reckless one, which means that the defiance of Britain and other Western allies won’t succeed if it’s merely fleeting," Taylor wrote. "Foreign governments must be prepared to weather the storm of Trump’s temperament as it grows more thunderous than ever."