It’s official: Donald Trump’s foreign policy isn’t just a train wreck — it’s a full-on Bravo reality show where the star keeps flipping tables and alienating the entire cast. Around the globe, former allies are furiously cancelling contracts, snubbing U.S. military deals, and rolling their eyes so hard they’re practically doing ocular CrossFit. Denmark alone just ghosted the U.S. on an $8 billion Patriot missile defense contract, opting for a Franco-Italian system instead. Why? Because apparently threatening to annex Greenland and running a covert espionage campaign to destabilize Danish territories is not, shockingly, the hallmark of a stable business partner.
And yes, this is the same Donald Trump who allegedly joked about installing a “kill switch” in American weapons systems — which, if true, would be the world’s least reassuring sales pitch. (“Buy our missiles! We might turn them off mid-fight!”) Combine that with his soft-focus romance with Vladimir Putin — so soft it makes a Hallmark Christmas movie look edgy — and it’s little wonder NATO allies are running for the exits faster than Melania at a MAGA rally.
Take Portugal. The country just decided to buy French Rafale fighter jets instead of America’s much-hyped F-35s. France is out here sipping café au lait while Trump’s America sits in the corner muttering about tariffs. Canada is reevaluating its F-35 orders. Europe is buying European. Tourism to the U.S. is plummeting, Vegas casinos are choking, and foreign visitors now see America as less Disneyland and more dystopian Hunger Games — where the prize for crossing the border is an ICE raid.
Case in point: Trump’s ICE agents swooping down on 300 South Korean workers legally in the U.S. to train Americans at a Hyundai plant. Imagine investing $12 billion in a U.S. factory only to have your workforce treated like cartel kingpins. Unsurprisingly, South Korea responded with a big “We’re out” and no actual trade deal signed, despite Trump’s Truth Social fan fiction about a $350 billion agreement. His own commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, had to sheepishly admit there was no deal — and likely won’t be one.
Meanwhile, Trump’s Putin bootlicking continues to reach new levels of cringe. Poland invoked Article 4 of NATO after Russian drones crossed its border, essentially waving a “help” flag at the alliance. Trump’s response? A shrug and a “Maybe Russia didn’t do it.” Russia then escalated drone attacks into Romania. NATO’s resolve is being tested, and Trump’s answer is to clutch Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán’s handwritten notes like love letters from summer camp. (“Tell Slovakia I say hi!” he reportedly gushed.)
And as Trump removes sanctions on Russian banks and even allows imports of Russian eggs (yes, eggs), Vladimir Putin scores propaganda wins that would make the KGB’s Cold War playbook look amateur. International headlines show American troops literally kneeling to roll out red carpets for Putin — a humiliation so staggering it should be studied in future textbooks under “How to Erode Global Power in Three Easy Steps.”
Contrast this with Brazil, where former president Jair Bolsonaro just got a 27-year prison sentence for his own insurrectionist antics. President Lula basically subtweeted Trump from the podium, saying if Trump had pulled January 6th in Brazil, he’d already be behind bars. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court is busy granting Trump “absolute immunity,” a phrase so cartoonish it might as well have been lifted from a “Looney Tunes” villain contract.
This isn’t strength. This isn’t “the art of the deal.” This is global humiliation — the geopolitical equivalent of showing up to prom in a Burger King crown and declaring yourself royalty. Under Trump, America has gone from leader of the free world to the guy everyone crosses the street to avoid.
Even America’s staunchest allies are looking elsewhere for leadership. Biden, for all his faults, added two new members to NATO (Finland and Sweden) and rebuilt alliances Trump torched. Trump, by contrast, has pushed India toward China, undermined trilateral talks with South Korea and Japan, and essentially told Ukraine, “Good luck out there.”
The result? A world that views America not as a dependable partner but as a chaotic ex who can’t stop drunk-texting Putin at 3 a.m. If this is what “America First” looks like, the world is saying, “Hard pass.”
