The Trump administration is engaged in self-defeating hypocrisy by moving to fund think tanks in Europe that will promote its ideological worldview. The Financial Times reported yesterday that the State Department intends to provide financial grants and other support to European initiatives which challenge European governments’ policies on free speech and promote MAGA values. This strategy will waste taxpayer money, while alienating allied governments and fostering anti-Americanism among their populations.

This is not to say that Europe deserves respect for its approach to freedom of speech. On the contrary, as US Vice President JD Vance noted in his Munich Security Conference speech last year, laws in Europe are often antithetical to the values which European leaders claim their nations uphold. This concern applies to defamation laws which prioritise the privacy of the corrupt over the public interest, and hate speech laws which prioritise the emotions of the few over general freedom of expression. Despite constant investigations and sanctions, European governments are still happy to use American social media companies as tax windfalls to make up state deficits. I can personally attest that it is far easier to write about the corruption of Russian oligarchs from a desk in the United States than one in the United Kingdom.

Still, this is bad policy from the Trump administration. For a start, it is wasteful. Team Trump rightly laments the excessive foreign spending of the Biden administration. This constituted boondoggles such as the $45 million spent on DEI scholarships in Myanmar and the $3 million it spent on “girl-centered climate action” in Brazil. The Government Accountability Office also found hundreds of billions in dollars in wasted funds due to fraud and poor oversight.

Of course, the Trump administration will not make things better by engaging in its own wasteful spending. The President is not liked in much of Western Europe, including by otherwise pro-American conservative-minded voters. This perception has been worsened in recent weeks by his threats to annex Greenland and his diminishing of the sacrifices made by certain European militaries during the war in Afghanistan. While throwing money at think tanks aligned with MAGA sentiments will be welcomed by those organisations, it is highly unlikely to shift the European needle in favour of MAGA sentiments. Indeed, it may have the opposite effect as Europeans will likely reject perceived efforts to manipulate their opinions. Nor does it serve US interests in bolstering common, pro-American attitudes across the European political spectrum.

This move will also aggravate European governments, which already perceive unprecedented hostility from Washington. And while these governments bear far more blame for the decline in transatlantic relations than they like to admit — by playing to China and failing to spend adequately on defence, for example — this poorly conceived plan will only irritate them.

The better course of action would be for Trump administration officials to continue to speak openly and robustly about their specific concerns in terms of European speech laws. More importantly, senior Republicans must express their respect for the sovereignty of allies and, ultimately, the choices of free citizens in those countries to elect whichever governments they so choose. Only that — not throwing money at influence operations — will regain European trust.

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Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

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