United States President Donald Trump lashed out at one of his few European allies yesterday, calling Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni “unacceptable.”

• “I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” he said.

After President Trump’s 2024 election victory, the fringe right in Europe jumped on board the Trump train and received enthusiastic support from Trump, Elon Musk, JD Vance and others. But the Iran war and Trump’s criticism of the pope have caused them to decisively reject maga.

• Many of these parties, like the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany and National Rally in France, already had an anti-America streak, but they backed maga partly opportunistically and partly because President Trump promised to bring home U.S. troops and stop American wars.

That has backfired. President Trump’s rhetoric on seizing Greenland and his attack on Iran have been very unpopular.

“It’s clear the majority of people in these countries, if not anti-American, have turned anti-Trump,” said Daniel Baer of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. So Europe’s fringe right is changing course.

• AfD co-leader Alice Weidel has told senior party figures to reduce their trips to Washington. The party’s other co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, accused Israel of dragging America into war with Iran, praised Spain for its refusal to cooperate, and called for Germany to evict American troops from German bases.
• Marine Le Pen, of France’s National Rally, called President Trump’s war aims “erratic.”
• National Rally leader Jordan Bardella, in January during the Greenland spat, accused Trump of attempting the “vassalization” of Europe.

One of the few right-wing leaders who did not turn on Trump was Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. JD Vance visited Hungary as a strong sign of support for his reelection campaign—then Orbán got voted out in a landslide.

• Other leaders got the message.

Key decision: Meloni was the only European leader to attend Donald Trump’s inauguration. Yet she has also obstructed the Iran war, blocking U.S. warplanes from using a shared base on Sicily.

• For Meloni, the leader of the successor of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Party, support of the Catholic Church is a core part of her appeal. After the pope criticized the war on Iran and President Trump criticized the pope back, she released a statement: “I find President Trump’s words towards the Holy Father unacceptable. The pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war.”

Counterpoint: President Trump has hurled insults at people, only to work closely with them later.

Still, whether or not the two movements reconcile, this spat is a reminder that the maga and European far-right odd couple has fundamental disagreements.

• These leaders don’t want to make America great again. They want their movements, their nations and their Continent to be great again, and they’ll use maga when, and only when, it furthers that agenda.

“Today, gullible men like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are still trying to empower a United States of Europe,” wrote Trumpet executive editor Stephen Flurry last year. “Yet we are already starting to see an anti-America spirit take root in Germany, a spirit that will soon hijack the whole continent.”

A year later, that spirit is stronger, and the phoniness of Trump’s European friendships has been exposed.