I’ve been to about 65 countries and territories around the world (depending on how you count them), and all seven continents over the last several years. I’ve had intelligent conversations with people in all corners of Europe (including the Baltics), Latin America, West Africa, the GCC states, Central Asia, China, Singapore, Australia and Canada.

I’ve never once heard admiration for Trump from anyone outside the U.S. The most common opinion is that he is bizarre and unprofessional, and there is widespread discomfort that the U.S. would put such a person in the position that he is in.

In some areas, there is an awareness of the need to humor the current U.S. administration to get it to live up to pre-existing obligations, such as NATO alliances, while at the same time planning for a future when an unreliable United States might not be there to help former partners. In that respect, the Trump administration is having worldwide consequences: it is creating a new world order where the U.S. might no longer have the leading role that it has today.

Here’s a statistic I’ll bet will come as news to you: Donald Trump has run for president three times, in 2016, 2020 and 2024. On Election Day in each of those years, he never once received as much as 50% of the popular vote, meaning that more than half of the Americans who voted did not want him to become president. And if he didn’t receive as much as half of the popular vote, it’s a given that he didn’t receive more than half.

Schmuck à l’Orange received almost three million fewer popular votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and became president only thanks to the electoral vote. In 2020 he lost both the popular and electoral vote to Joe Biden. He came closest in 2024 when he received 49% of the popular vote to Kamala Harris’s 48%, with third-party candidates accounting for the difference. But more than three million fewer votes were cast in 2024 than in 2020. Evidently neither Trump nor Harris excited some 2024 voters.

Since his second inauguration, Trump’s popularity ratings have steadily declined. Most likely this is thanks to voters who have belatedly realized that the man who sought bankruptcy protection six times knows no more about economics than he does about monogamy, and that he’s spending most of his time looking for ways to reward his wealthy backers, cozy up to dictators, torment his perceived enemies, increase his net worth, and create monuments to himself all over Washington, D.C.

Is he beloved in other countries? He isn’t even beloved in his own.

He is seen for what he is: a clown and a crook. People outside of the United States don’t understand why Americans voted for an obvious fraud. He is a person of below average intelligence, he is ignorant about things he should have learned as a child and he craves attention. He pretends to be an intelligent person but his idea of what smart person is like is very childish. He thinks that being smart means knowing everything about everything. He is also very lazy. His time is divided between playing golf, watching TV and posting nonsense on social media. He takes credit for work done by other people. In short, he is a joke. The United States cannot be respected for as long as such a baffoon is its president.