“We’re going up to the bluffs to paint ‘Springfield Sucks’ in huge letters. That way, whenever they look into Shelbyville, they will realize that they suck!”

Thus reasoned the preteen antagonists from neighboring Shelbyville in “Lemon of Troy,” a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, when the series was in its prime. This glimpse inside the minds of young would-be vandals revealed a way of thinking that was simple—even simplistic.

But might it not also be elegant? Are there not instances when people who suck should be made aware of this reality, for their sake and for ours?

The question is topical because of the National Security Strategy that the Trump administration released on December 4. As with most such documents in an administration’s first year, it covers what went wrong, what the current administration is doing to fix matters in broad terms, and then delves into more specific remedies by region or topic.

This document is unique, however, for the region it singles out for unvarnished criticism: Europe. One might even conclude that the White House believes Europe’s current political class sucks.

After assessing regions more important to the United States, including the Western Hemisphere, Asia, and the Middle East, the document arrives on page 25 at “Promoting European Greatness.”

The document declares that Europe’s “economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

Perhaps most galling to the wealthy moochers who populate the continent’s political class, the document faults Europe for hysteria over Russia that has delayed an end to the killing in Ukraine, calls it the “Ukraine War” instead of “Putin’s invasion of Ukraine™,” and defines U.S. policy as “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” So much for celebrating Transgender Pride and NATO accession together in Kiev in 2026.

In what can only be interpreted as support for Europe’s surging opposition parties of the New Right, such as Alternative for Germany, National Rally (France), and Reform UK—as well as ruling New Right parties Brothers of Italy and Fidesz (Hungary)—the document notes, “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”

Experts on both sides of the Atlantic have panned the document. However, the Trump administration is on solid factual footing, and clarity about our national security strategy is something the American people and U.S. allies deserve.

Take the United Kingdom, for example. Its leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and his left-wing Labour Party have support below 20 percent, according to recent polls. If the British public voted today, both Labour and the nominal opposition Tories (who have sucked for decades) would trail the upstart Reform UK party.

Factors driving this reality include uncontrolled and unwanted immigration, crime, economic contraction, inflation, and tax hikes. The police seem more concerned with arresting Brits for tweets that the government deems offensive than with apprehending perpetrators of actual violence.

Beyond the numbers, Britain’s political class demonstrates a complete lack of pride and confidence. Of particular interest to the United States, London appears to be in full suck-up mode with China.

Britain counts among its subjects a man of great faith and ingenuity, Jimmy Lai, a UK citizen who started life with little more than the shirt on his back and rose to become a wildly successful pro-democracy media tycoon. Lai embodied the quest for freedom in Hong Kong that Britain promised when ceding the colony to China in 1997. By Christmas 2020, China had completed the destruction of that freedom, had obliterated Lai’s media company, and had begun what has now become a five-year stint in solitary confinement. On Monday, December 15, he was finally found guilty after a show trial for bogus national security offenses. He faces de facto life in prison.

Instead of expressing outrage at this treatment of one of its subjects—and insisting that the agreement it reached with China to preserve freedom be honored—the British leader is hoping to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in January on friendly terms. He will go as a supplicant, seeking an ill-defined and wishful Chinese solution to Britain’s economic woes. Along the way, he will likely concede Beijing a new giant embassy in London that everyone knows will be a grand center for Chinese espionage.

Who will stand up for Jimmy Lai and the principles of freedom and faith he embodies, locked away as they are by the Chinese in Stanley Prison? President Donald Trump is who. In fact, Trump raised Lai’s case with Xi during their October meeting and has repeatedly advocated for his release.

Let that sink in. A supposedly transactional president whose foreign policy is the polar opposite of the preachiness associated with the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama is the one standing up for right over wrong and for the sovereign individual over the lawless mob. He does so for a European subject whose government is too weak—and too lost—to do so itself.

Perhaps the National Security Strategy went too easy on the European political class.

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Christian Whiton was a State Department senior advisor in the second Bush and first Trump administrations.