Count ’Em on One Hand: Trump’s Global Friends Are Disappearing Fast

His dear buddy Viktor Orbán got crushed at the polls. And even Nigel Farage wants nothing to do with him. The upshot: This helps the domestic opposition.

Pope Leo XIV may be the most prominent and respected figure abroad who is increasingly critical of President Trump. But he’s far from alone. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva this week mocked Trump for his unpopularity with voters abroad, telling reporters it would help Lula electorally if Trump interjected himself into Brazilian politics as the American president has in Hungary and other nations. 

There’s more. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni blasted Trump for his repeated criticism of the pope. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “fed up” with Trump. Even Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, once an admirer of Trump and a Mar-a-Lago habitué, distanced himself from the American president, telling the Financial Times, “I happen to know him, but that’s by the by.” 

From the left (Lula), center (Starmer, Leo), and right (Farage, Meloni), Trump is taking it on the chin. World leaders, particularly Europeans, disliking Trump is nothing new. Some have been complaining about him for a decade. But the disdain for the U.S. president is now more open and blunt than earlier in his second term, the dismissal of his ideas more direct and unequivocal. 

This shift matters for two reasons. American presidents are much less constrained by courts and Congress on foreign affairs compared to domestic policy. But other countries can blunt a president’s international goals—and that’s happening now to Trump. Secondly, Trump’s domestic opponents are helped if they’re joined by a chorus of international critics. The mainstream media may downplay congressional Democrats’ latest rebuke of the president. It’s harder to ignore those same comments from the pontiff or the right-wing leader of another country like Meloni. 

The war in........

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