How the Euro elite helps Trump

Donald Trump has always got a kick out of humiliating people who suck up to him. That was the entire premise of The Apprentice, and a running theme in his two non-consecutive terms as president. His career is littered with the hunched skeletons of discarded lackeys. His current lackeys know this, of course: it is a risk they knowingly incur, and a small price to pay for power.

Trump is such a natural at this, though, that he can have a similar effect on Europe's elite. There's the spectacle of Emmanuel Macron massaging his ego and Mark Rutte calling him "daddy" — but however unedifying this may be, it is just diplomacy. Stranger still is the way they often seem to cede to him, unforced, a kind of moral authority. Trump brings out their masochistic streak; they become eager participants in his hobby of Europe-bashing. What pathetic little leeches we are, they cry out, when the President attacks them for being defence freeloaders, exploiting American goodwill: he has us bang to rights.