At the White House Easter egg roll this week, Donald Trump took some time to tell attendees how impressed he was with his record. The president seemed especially interested in the United States’ global standing.

“We’re respected by everybody, and that’s the way we’re going to keep it,” he boasted, adding, “We are the most respected country anywhere in the world.”

The line, of course, has been a staple of the Republican’s rhetoric across both of his terms, despite the absurdity of the underlying point. International public opinion research has consistently shown that global respect and confidence in the U.S. have reached record depths under Trump, despite his insistence on pretending otherwise.

Fresh evidence emerged this week. Politico reported:

The U.S. under Donald Trump is seen as more of a threat than an ally, according to a new POLITICO European Pulse survey of six major EU countries.

Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump has questioned Washington’s commitment to NATO, threatened to annex Greenland and Canada, hit allies with tariffs and launched a war with Iran that European countries refused to join.

According to the data, only 12% of those polled across Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy saw the United States as a close ally. The same polling found that 36% saw the U.S. as a threat. (The surveys were conducted from March 13 to 21, the third week of the war with Iran.)

These results come on the heels of a Gallup report, released last week, that showed China surpassing the United States in global approval ratings. Gallup noted, “China’s five-percentage-point advantage over the U.S. is the widest Gallup has recorded in China’s favor in nearly 20 years. … Disapproval of U.S. leadership rose [in 2025] to a record-high 48%.”

In February, YouGov polling also showed opinions of the United States falling to their lowest level since the pollster began tracking them a decade ago.

Around this time three years ago, partway through Joe Biden’s term in the White House, Trump sat down with Fox News’ Bret Baier, and the host asked the Republican what he considered the most important issue facing the country. Trump talked about his usual priorities — border security, getting “the woke out of our military,” etc. — before focusing on his principal point of concern.

“Basically, respect all over the world,” Trump said. “We don’t have it anymore. We had tremendous respect three years ago [in 2020]. We don’t have respect anymore. … We have to get that respect back. And if we don’t, we’ve got some big problems.”

Even at the time, the rhetoric was quite bonkers, since the United States’ global reputation improved during the Democratic administration. But now that Trump has returned to power, the foolish rhetoric looks vastly worse.

I can imagine some on the right shrugging off polling data like this as irrelevant. After all, Trump has prioritized an “America First” attitude, so perhaps his followers will argue that the damage he’s done to the United States’ international reputation shouldn’t matter.

The problem with this defense is that Trump has invested an enormous amount of time and energy making the opposite argument. Indeed, two weeks ago, the president spoke in Miami at an event sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and said, “America is respected again all over the world, perhaps like never before.”

It would be great if that were true. Thanks to Trump’s failures, scandals, misjudgments and humiliations, it’s not.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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