Instapundit

Hearing disturbingly feminine, Somali corruption-curious Minnesota governor Tim Walz complaining that, because of Donald Trump, people are driving by his house shouting “Retard!” should’ve been the funniest thing that happened over the last few news cycles, but our European friends have done it one better. Actually, they’re not our friends. They’re annoying layabouts who do nothing but whine and complain as they feed off the corpse of the civilization they inherited like cultural trust fund babies. They have gotten very upset because Donald Trump’s national security strategy accurately recognizes that Europe is unable to defend itself and is increasingly unworthy of us squandering more time, blood, and treasure to do it for them. So, they’re lashing out, threatening to be responsible for their own defense.

Yeah, that’ll show us. Throw us in that briar patch, Horst. There aren’t enough “LOLs” on the Internet for how funny it is to see you stomping your feet because we’re done picking up the check.

This is personal to me because I’ve spent a substantial part of my life doing the jobs that Europeans would not do. From November 1988 to April 1991, with a multi-month tangent to the Persian Gulf War, I was part of NATO in what was then West Germany. It’s always great to have people tell me how important NATO is when I was part of it, and they weren’t, but let’s put that aside. I was there at the end of the Cold War. We were still doing things like having REFORGER exercises and going out on alerts at 3 a.m., where we would shiver in our assembly areas knowing that if the balloon really went up, our role was to die in place so the locals could continue to consume strudel and bitch about Ronald Reagan. Then, for a year between 2004 and 2006, I left Irina with a little kid and went to Kosovo to keep those Europeans from killing each other. I got a non-Article 5 NATO medal out of that. None of this makes me some sort of hero – in Germany, I ran a heavily armed car wash, and in Kosovo, I largely shared my legal and business experience with the locals. But I was away from America and my family, cleaning up Europe’s messes for the Europeans. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a little gratitude for my time – and the time of millions of other Americans.

Spoiler: There’s never going to be any gratitude. There can’t be. The fact that we uncouth hicks from the New World had to come back to unscrew the mess the Europeans have made of Europe was never going to get us anything like a simple danke schön. That they needed us grated on them then, and it grates at them now that big, loud Yankees were the only thing keeping their sorry butts from chaos.

British expat Charles Cooke adds: Europe Is Delusional.

Criticize a European from America and you will immediately be hit with a wall of undeservedly self-righteous disdain. This should not be mistaken for pride; rather, it is that peculiar, negative, defensive sort of hauteur that is focused less on the positive virtues of the speaker, and more on his deeply held conviction that, whatever his deficiencies, at least he’s not you. That, at root, is the contemporary European mantra — At Least We’re Not American — and, like many mantras, it is impervious to fact or repudiation. What about the massive gap in GDP that has opened up between the U.S. and Europe since 2008? At least we’re not American. What about the anemic performance of European companies relative to those in the United States? At least we’re not American. What about the gulf between GDP per capita in Europe and GDP per capita in the United States, or about the U.S.’s great advantages in biotech and energy and advanced semiconductors, or the fact that, if most European countries were to join the U.S., they’d have a lower standard of living than people do in Mississippi, or that the average European is six times more likely to die from a lack of heating or air conditioning than an American is from a gun, or that most European countries are unable to usefully project military power? At least we’re not American.

As Cooke concludes, “Why, pray, do Europeans tell themselves that? Because, if they didn’t, they might have to account for their failures, and because that would require a capacity for introspection that they simply do not possess.”

It’s been a lopsided battle for quite some time. A quarter century ago, Tom Wolfe wrote: “European labels no longer held even the slightest snob appeal except among people known as ‘intellectuals,’ whom we will visit in a moment. Our typical mechanic or tradesman took it for granted that things European were second-rate. Aside from three German luxury automobiles—the Mercedes-Benz, the BMW, and the Audi—he regarded European-manufactured goods as mediocre to shoddy. On his trips abroad, our electrician, like any American businessman, would go to superhuman lengths to avoid being treated in European hospitals, which struck him as little better than those in the Third World. He considered European hygiene so primitive that to receive an injection in a European clinic voluntarily was sheer madness.”

IT’S NOT FAT, IT’S JUST BIG-BONED. Rocket Lab completes final tests on reusable ‘Hungry Hippo’ fairing ahead of 1st Neutron rocket launch.

IT’S LIARS AND GRIFTERS ALL THE WAY DOWN:

BREAKING: Tashella Dickerson, a BLM Oklahoma City Leader, was just INDICTED for wire fraud and money laundering.

BLMOKC reportedly raised more than $5.6 million in bail funds to free George Floyd rioters.

However, when bail funds were returned, Dickerson allegedly pocketed… pic.twitter.com/VIu9eEAj1q

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 11, 2025

SALENA ZITO COVERS ACTUAL NEWS:

Why is the President going to Pennsylvania? Why are CEOs of both Ford and US Steel praising his economic approach & tariffs? I got this! My interview with POTUS https://t.co/02zaLcnO03

— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) December 8, 2025

KAMALA REACHES STAGE FIVE OF THE KUBLER-ROSS MODEL: Did Kamala Just Admit That Her Political Career Is Over?

Instead of being unburdened by the past, as she so often exhorted us to be, Harris seems content with her place in it. “I understand the focus on ’28 and all that. But there will be a marble bust of me in Congress. I am a historic figure like any vice president of the United States ever was.”

This isn’t conceit or braggadocio. It’s a simple statement of fact. There are actually busts of all the vice presidents, from the first, John Adams, right up to “Richard B. Cheney,” in the Senate wing of the Capitol. There are no busts yet of Old Joe Biden, Mike Pence, Kamala, or JD Vance, but they’re likely on the way.

This is not precisely an honor; it’s just a list, an observation that these people held a certain office. This is clear from the fact that all the vice presidents from Adams to Cheney are included, including Spiro Agnew, even though he resigned in disgrace (and was actually a tardy addition for just that reason); Aaron Burr, even though he shot and killed Alexander Hamilton; and J. Danforth Quayle, even though he couldn’t spell “potato.”

Kamala Harris’ pointing out that her bust will one day join this illustrious company was tantamount to saying that her political career is over. And maybe it is. So even if her 2028 presidential run is already a bust, she can console herself with the fact that she’ll always have her bust.

Still though, we’ll have to thank Kamala for inadvertently giving Herbert Hoover’s long-forgotten veep some new and well-deserved recognition: Fact check: Charles Curtis holds spot as first person of color as vice president.