The Brief – Is Trump God?

Medieval philosophers used to mull whether God could create a stone so heavy that not even He could lift it. Over the past year, I have often wrestled with a dumber version of this paradox: Could Donald Trump ever propose an idea so terrible that not even Europe will support it?

The evidence suggests that, with rare exceptions, he can’t. Since his return to the White House, the purported Leader of the Free World – or, to his disciples, the God Emperor of Mankind – has repeatedly wielded his political quasi-omnipotence to fundamentally transform EU leaders’ construal of economics, international law, and even morality itself.

In other words, EU leaders don’t agree with Trump because he’s right. They agree with him because he determines what right is – an ethical paradigm that, not coincidentally, is identical to Trump’s own.

Take trade policy. In February, the European Commission vociferously condemned Trump’s tariffs as “unjustified” measures that would…