The “Make a Deal” With the Dictator Dilemma

An Open Letter to Europe: Its People and Its Leaders

David Salzillo, author of Salzillo’s Two Cents is my first guest writer during my vacation

David is a lifelong resident of Providence, Rhode Island. At age 3, he was diagnosed with what was then called Autistic Disorder. A Brown neuropsychiatrist once predicted he would end up in an institution. Luckily for all of us, she was wrong.

Today, David is a 1L student at the Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island. Over the summers, he helps his father (also named David) with his federal workers' compensation law practice, which devotes itself to ensuring that injured federal workers receive what they deserve when they’re hurt on the job. Outside of that, David dabbles in as much as he can, including politics. Unfortunately, recent events have made that a necessity as well as a passion. He hopes that someday soon, politics will go back to being boring again.

David writes with urgency and unflinching moral clarity, but never loses his grip on strategic possibility. In this open letter to the EU, he lays out why appeasing Trump — even with clever manoeuvring — only strengthens the authoritarian machine behind him. With a blend of wit, foresight, and a firm grasp of the long game, he invites European leaders to choose resolve over retreat while there's still time to shift the balance.

It’s my pleasure to share this piece with you today.

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

-Benjamin Franklin

The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down, OK? Eat the bread. Eat the bread. You guys saw what happened to CBS? Yeah, well, guess who owns CBS? Paramount! Do you really wanna end up like Colbert?

- Jesus Christ from South Park

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Dear leaders and citizens of the European Union,

I get it. I mean, what do you do when a madman enters the White House, takes charge of what was arguably the strongest economy in the world, and threatens to place insanely high tariffs on everyone unless he gets the pretend “wins” that he wants?

I understand why you want to just cut your losses. I understand why you say, look, let’s just give him the stupid little photo op he wants. We’ll make the “deal,” you think to yourselves, and we’ll slip in as many terms favorable to us as possible. Maybe we’ll throw in some empty promises and far-fetched plans while we’re at it. Just to throw him and his hounds off the trail.

Then, long-term, you move away from the American market for good so that you don’t have to tolerate this kind of humiliation of the EU ever again. After all, it’s America’s problem, right? Not the European Union's. The EU has no obligation to stop America from its death spiral; it needs to protect itself and its own interests.

I repeat, I get it.

Many people, including the great American economist Paul Krugman, argue that the EU made only “apparent concessions” (emphasis not mine). He even goes so far as to claim that you all “played Trump for a fool.”

I have little reason to doubt that, even if we have more to learn about the “deal.” Your negotiators are without a doubt more prepared than his, and your leaders care much more about the details than America’s leader does. Besides, we all know that Trump is desperate for short-term wins. He doesn’t have the patience or the ability for real long-term thinking.

Moreover, you and I know that these “deals” do not benefit Americans. We know these “deals” will eventually push countries away from America. We know that these “deals” will not stop the Trump tariffs from weakening the American economy. No matter how many times TACO (“Trump Always Chickens Out”) wins the day. Eventually, something has to give.

But that’s the key word: eventually. In the meantime, the Trump regime goosesteps on. He will continue picking off Ivy League schools one-by-one (Harvard is due to cave any day, I think). He will continue bending Paramount and other media companies to his will. And, he will continue expanding the size of his personal immigration police (ICE) so that their budget is larger even than the military of China.

That, my friends, is just the beginning. In truth, the more terrifying threats to American democracy are the ones that have been built up over decades. Look, for example, at Palantir, the surveillance company benefiting handsomely from its work with the Trump Administration. Palantir was not built overnight. Neither were the American Big Tech companies, which now have awesome and unheard-of power over all our daily lives.

The big alliance of money, power, and influence built around Trump is much bigger than Trump. And now that alliance sees the opportunity to deliver the death blow to the freedoms we once enjoyed here in America.

Look, we are on the cusp of the AI revolution. In time, how much will the power of tech over our everyday life expand? Even if AI just lives up to a tenth of its promised value? Who knows. Yet we have seen how much control China has been able to exercise over the average Chinese citizen before AI threatened to change the face of the globe.

If America falls, then all the three major global powers today (the United States, China, and Russia) will have authoritarian governments with technology that the Hitlers and Stalins of yesterday could only dream of.

You do not need an overactive imagination to figure what else that could lead to. At any rate, Lori Corbet Mann has presented a vivid enough picture already. On multiple fronts.

If anything, Trump is the weak link. The weak thread that threatens to unravel the dress of Project 2025, surveillance capitalism, and American “Christian” nationalism. Do you doubt me? Just imagine if someone like Hungary’s Orban had Trump’s power over Big Tech and the world economy. As I am sure you know, he would not have made nearly the number and scale of mistakes that Trump has.

Place a smarter dictator in Trump’s position, and America could very well have fallen 3 or 4 years ago. Without so much as a whimper from the opposition.

Trump is the weak link. That is the cause for hope. Take advantage of it (and of him) while you can. Do not bend, do not break, and never yield. Even for the photo op. After all, Trump has propped up his entire business and political career on these types of photo op “wins.” It’s the Art of Smoke & Mirrors.

In Trump’s world, optics vs. reality is irrelevant. Perception is all. Don’t build him up when you can help bring him down.

Now, can I guarantee you success if you refuse to back down? No. But I can guarantee you a fighting chance. And that is better than sleepwalking into a future of Trump, Xi, and Putin’s making.

We cannot afford to simply sit and watch as the frog slowly boils to death in America. Now is the time to test the limits of how much Trump pain America’s people and their representatives are willing to tolerate. Not later.

The pain we would all feel short-term pales in comparison to the long-term danger we face. This is war, whether we like it or not. Yet it is a war we can win.

Just days before Europe made its “deal” with Trump, his approval rating recently hit a low of 37% (according to Gallup). The last time his approval rating was lower than this, it was immediately after January 6. The last time his approval rating was as low as this, we have to go back to shortly before Charlottesville.

Whether it is from the Epstein Files or from the tariffs or from something else, the opportunity is there.

We must not waste it. Because we may not get another like it.

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📌 I’m currently on a much-needed annual break.

Although I’ll still be sharing my usual ‘hope’ post at the start of the week, during the time I’m away I aim to take a proper rest from social media, so I don’t plan on replying to messages or comments until I return. I hope you’ll understand. I’ll be back on Monday, 1 September — rested, recharged, and full of new ideas for the road ahead.

I'm so looking forward to personally catching-up with you again, then. Truly, it’s each and every one of you who makes this work possible — and I’m so grateful you’re here.