Despite facing significant challenges in US-European relations over the past year, President Donald Trump has asserted that the ‘people of Europe like me’.
This assertion is difficult to substantiate, given the events following the Trump administration’s commencement. In February 2025, Vice President JD Vance addressed the Munich Security Conference, emphasizing that Europe’s primary threat was internal rather than Russia.
During his speech, Vance criticized several NATO allies, including the United Kingdom, the US’s closest ally, on cultural issues, suggesting that liberal democracies in Europe risk ‘civilizational erasure’ due to immigration.
The tension escalated with President Trump’s threats to acquire Greenland from Denmark through military or economic means, which strained post-war alliances and prompted European nations to seek alternative security arrangements.
This shift in international partnerships has been noted by Trump, who has leveraged this to pressure NATO allies into increasing their military contributions.
In a White House ceremony on February 11, the president signed an executive order prioritizing the Department of Defense’s procurement of electricity from coal-fired plants.
In what has become a common occurrence in the Oval Office, Trump was honored with the title ‘Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal’, while he criticized European allies for their investments in renewable energy sources.
Mocking the proliferation of wind turbines across Europe, where they significantly contribute to energy production, Trump stated that ‘every time [a wind turbine] goes around it loses a fortune’.
Contrasting the aesthetics of coal-fired plants with wind turbines, Trump argued that wind energy has marred Europe’s natural beauty.
He remarked: “And you know, I was recently there and it’s not recognizable what they’ve done to their beautiful fields and those beautiful, beautiful scenic areas and they put those wind turbines all over the place and they’re chugging, chugging, chugging, not doing a damn thing.”
While denouncing Europe’s climate policies, Trump claimed that the continent’s populace agreed with him.
“But you know who likes me over there? The people like me over there. I can tell you because they know I’m right,” he added.
However, a YouGov poll from January revealed that fewer than 19 percent of people in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain held favorable views of Trump.
In Denmark, support was even lower, with only four percent viewing the president favorably, likely influenced by his stance on Greenland.