PARIS — For Europe’s populist right, U.S. President Donald Trump’s embrace was once seen as a political asset. Not anymore.
For years, nationalist leaders across the continent treated the American president’s support as proof that their politics had gone global. But with major elections looming in 2027, including in Italy, France and Poland, many are rethinking the value of that transatlantic backing.
Trump’s brand in Europe has soured — curdled by his tariff wars, threats against Greenland and a war on Iran that increased energy prices. His interventions, once welcomed by his ideological allies, are now seen as political explosives: liable to alienate moderate voters, split nationalist electorates and hand ammunition to their opponents.
A case in point is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, once seen as the U.S. president’s most prominent ally in Europe. After Trump claimed she had “begged” for a photo with him at the G7 summit last week, Meloni gave voice to what polls have been saying for months.
Brushing off a social media post in which Trump said she was “doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity,” the prime minister retorted: “Being your friend certainly has not helped it.”
“In any case, my popularity is none of your concern,” she added. “I suggest you focus on yours.”
In France, Jordan Bardella — head of the far-right National Rally party and a presidential front-runner — is making the same calculation. In an interview with POLITICO last week, he firmly rejected Trump’s backing and described the U.S. president’s behavior as “erratic.”
Even as the Trump administration’s leading figures have thrown their weight behind Europe’s nationalist parties, the U.S. president’s embrace has become a “poisoned gift,” said Jean-Yves Dormagen, president of the Cluster17 polling institute.
“Trump is really creating a problem for these leaders,” he stated. While their electorates are divided over Trump, they increasingly see him as a threat, he added.
A January survey conducted by Cluster17 in seven EU countries showed that while right-wing voters had a higher opinion of Trump than the general population, only a minority of them saw him as “a friend of Europe” — 18 percent among Bardella’s National Rally voters, 23 percent among Meloni’s Brothers of Italy voters and 25 percent among supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
In a POLITICO poll conducted by Public First in June, only 31 percent of AfD voters and 36 percent of National Rally voters agreed that the U.S. is “a reliable ally.”
In the U.K., Trump has become a liability for Nigel Farage’s right-wing populist Reform UK party, especially among swing voters. That is also true in France, where the U.S. president is unpopular among the center-right voters the National Rally is trying to win over, said Dormagen.
What makes the backlash especially awkward for Washington is that the politicians edging away from Trump are precisely the ones his administration has been seeking to court.
In its National Security Strategy published last year, the White House applauded “the growing influence of patriotic European parties.” In the months that followed, the administration backed that rhetoric with high-profile public endorsements and behind-the-scenes outreach to the very movements now calculating that Trump might cost them votes.
In one of the most high-profile examples, U.S. Vice President JD Vance traveled to Hungary to support former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his reelection bid in April, saying this was “the right thing to do.”
But after the Hungarian leader’s 16-year rule ended in a crushing defeat, most far-right leaders eyeing next year’s top political prizes are either reconsidering their stance on Trump or fully reversing it.
End of a political romance
The shift is especially notable in Italy and Germany, where the far-right has historically been very welcoming to the U.S. president.
Meloni was one of the first European leaders to congratulate Trump on his 2024 reelection. And when he kicked off a transatlantic trade war, she was quick to cast herself as a potential bridge between a terrified Europe and the guns-blazing president.
Their relationship was initially full of spark. At a White House meeting last April, Trump called her a “very special person” and accepted an invitation to Rome (he never went). Fast-forward to today, and the two are now publicly trading barbs after Meloni refused to let U.S. warplanes taking part in the Iran war use Italy’s military bases.
Meanwhile, in Germany, the Iran war has aggravated a crisis of confidence between Trump and the far right, which had already been building before the conflict. This spring, AfD leaders urged party officials to scale back trips to the U.S. ahead of key regional elections.
Still, not all of Europe’s right-wing leaders are publicly rethinking the relationship.
Poland’s right-wing populist Law and Justice party is still cultivating ties with Trump. Warsaw, which is headed for a parliamentary election next year, is a close political and military ally for the U.S., and it’s one of Europe’s largest buyers of American weapons for its fast-growing armed forces.
President Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by Law and Justice, is seeking to leverage his connections with Trump as he battles Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who holds the country’s most powerful office.
For Law and Justice, it is “more beneficial than risky to be on very good terms with Donald Trump for many reasons,” said Wojciech Szacki, head of the political desk at the Polityka Insight think tank. “It gives them some leverage in internal politics because the president of Poland is the only person who has access to the White House right now.”
At a press conference in Warsaw on Friday, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński praised Nawrocki’s “excellent relations with the American president” and hailed the alleged “success” of a Polish bid to get a permanent U.S. military base.
“A majority of Poles still think that what makes us safe is the presence of American soldiers in Poland,” said Szacki.
In the Cluster17 poll, 17 percent of all Polish respondents said Trump was “a friend of Europe” — the highest percentage among the seven EU countries polled.
NOTE: The Public First poll was conducted from Jun. 14 to Jun. 17, surveying more than 2,000 respondents each from U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Spain and Germany, and has an overall margin of error of ±2 percentage points. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.
