The dirty secret Europe's far right doesn't want Trump to know
U.S. President Donald Trump with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in the White House on November 7, 2025 (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
April 19, 2026
ALTERNET
President Donald Trump has done his best to curry the favor of Europe’s far right, but after seeing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán go down to humiliating defeat despite Trump’s support, the far right now wants to put daylight between itself and America’s leader.
“President Donald Trump’s offensive behavior toward Christians and his unnecessary and unpopular war in Iran isn’t just splitting his political base at home — it’s also alienating his allies abroad,” wrote MS NOW’s Zeeshan Aleem on Sunday. “Right-wing nationalists in Europe are becoming more and more wary of association with Trump and growing inclined to keep him at a distance to protect their own political projects. The trend marks a blow to Trump’s aspirations of creating an international bloc of right-wing nationalist states that work in concert to quash the left.”
Aleem ticked off a number of prominent Italian conservatives who are denouncing Trump including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a number of German lawmakers from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Romania’s European Parliament member Diana Sosoaca and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Their criticisms have ranged from his meddling in European domestic politics, his invasion of Iran and his attacks on Pope Leo XIV.
“Those bold criticisms speak to how incredibly damaging Trump’s war on Iran has been for his standing within his movement,” Aleem observed. “The surge in global oil prices is politically radioactive; far-right leaders and parties in Europe affiliated with Trump risk becoming associated with the energy crisis unless they take steps to create distance from him.”
Indeed, as recently as last week, the United Kingdom’s Brexit champion Nigel Farage downplayed his relationship with Trump, who he once said was ushering in “the beginning of a golden age,” by instead saying “I happen to know him, but that’s by the by.”
Overall, this pattern speaks to how Trump’s brash approach to governance has alienated America’s European allies.
“Trump, for so many people, epitomizes the ugly American — somebody who is bumptious and vulgar and ignorant about foreign cultures,” former Time Magazine editor Rick Stengel said in a recent podcast appearance on The Bulwark with former Daily Beast editor-in-chief John Avlon on Sunday. “So I think people sort of have come to the end of their patience with America.”
Ironically, Trump has aggressively courted the European far right as his natural ideological allies. Trump appointee Susan B. Rogers was selected as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs in large part to ingratiate herself to the far right, such as by describing German migrants as “barbarian rapist hordes,” falsely claiming Sweden’s immigration policy has caused sexual violence (“If your government cared about ‘women’s safety,’ it would have a different migration policy”) and incorrectly stating that “advocates of unlimited third world immigration have long controlled a disproportionate share of official knowledge production.”
Rogers even met with members of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party, which espouses an ideology widely perceived as neo-Nazi.
Ewan Gleadow
April 19, 2026
RAW STORY
Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at Uline Inc., in Alburtis, Pennsylvania on Dec. 16, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
MAGA supporters were dealt a devastating blow earlier this week and will struggle to recover from it, a political analyst has claimed.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a far-right autocrat who has led the country for 16 years, conceded defeat in April 2026 to opposition leader Peter Magyar, marking a stunning rebuke to Trump-backed authoritarianism in Europe. Endorsement from Vice President JD Vance was not enough to win Orban the election, marking an embarrassing moment for Donald Trump's administration and the MAGA movement.
Salon columnist Andrew O'Hehir believes Orban's election loss will set the MAGA movement back, but not stop them from attempting to pool their resources in Europe. He wrote, "It wasn't a great week for the far right’s self-appointed crusade to reconquer Europe as a fairytale paradise of whiteness and Christianity.
"Maybe that’s because that whole idea is vaporware, rooted in a nonsensical social and historical vision and devoted to a losing battle against economic and demographic reality. But that quality of noble, doomed struggle toward impossible goals is both the far-right movement’s fundamental weakness and the source of its power and danger."
O'Hehir went on to suggest that MAGA's backing of Orban and the subsequent election loss highlighted an undermining of Trump's own support during his second term in the Oval Office.
He wrote, "Viktor Orbán, the pudgy poster boy for 'illiberal democracy' and object of a mysterious man-crush by legions of American conservatives, suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat in Hungary that felt, at least for a day or two, like the global MAGA movement’s Waterloo moment.
"As for Donald Trump, what is there to say? The entire world is over him, big time, and it’s the unique curse of America’s narcissistic self-regard that we’re still stuck with him, dominating the headlines day after day with his empty, contradictory and randomly-punctuated blather.
"Trump heads into the latter stages of his presidency as a damaged and toxic figure, a human AI-meme desperately trying to spin his way past the massive humiliation of the Iran war he chose to fight and the global energy crisis he single-handedly created.
"As for the ambitious schemes to reshape Europe’s political map variously proposed by JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, among others, to this point none have amounted to more than flatulent rhetoric."
Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at Uline Inc., in Alburtis, Pennsylvania on Dec. 16, 2025. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
MAGA supporters were dealt a devastating blow earlier this week and will struggle to recover from it, a political analyst has claimed.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a far-right autocrat who has led the country for 16 years, conceded defeat in April 2026 to opposition leader Peter Magyar, marking a stunning rebuke to Trump-backed authoritarianism in Europe. Endorsement from Vice President JD Vance was not enough to win Orban the election, marking an embarrassing moment for Donald Trump's administration and the MAGA movement.
Salon columnist Andrew O'Hehir believes Orban's election loss will set the MAGA movement back, but not stop them from attempting to pool their resources in Europe. He wrote, "It wasn't a great week for the far right’s self-appointed crusade to reconquer Europe as a fairytale paradise of whiteness and Christianity.
"Maybe that’s because that whole idea is vaporware, rooted in a nonsensical social and historical vision and devoted to a losing battle against economic and demographic reality. But that quality of noble, doomed struggle toward impossible goals is both the far-right movement’s fundamental weakness and the source of its power and danger."
O'Hehir went on to suggest that MAGA's backing of Orban and the subsequent election loss highlighted an undermining of Trump's own support during his second term in the Oval Office.
He wrote, "Viktor Orbán, the pudgy poster boy for 'illiberal democracy' and object of a mysterious man-crush by legions of American conservatives, suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat in Hungary that felt, at least for a day or two, like the global MAGA movement’s Waterloo moment.
"As for Donald Trump, what is there to say? The entire world is over him, big time, and it’s the unique curse of America’s narcissistic self-regard that we’re still stuck with him, dominating the headlines day after day with his empty, contradictory and randomly-punctuated blather.
"Trump heads into the latter stages of his presidency as a damaged and toxic figure, a human AI-meme desperately trying to spin his way past the massive humiliation of the Iran war he chose to fight and the global energy crisis he single-handedly created.
"As for the ambitious schemes to reshape Europe’s political map variously proposed by JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, among others, to this point none have amounted to more than flatulent rhetoric."
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