Uncomfortable truths are preferable to palatable lies.

“What do you think the Europeans are hoping to hear? Something more conciliatory than last year?”

The reporter who asked U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio this question last week probably hoped to needle one of President Donald Trump’s staunchest cabinet members.

If so, they were sorely disappointed. 

Sec. Rubio has been an unwavering supporter of the new global “Trump Doctrine.” From “peace through strength” to “America First,” Rubio has been quietly, determinedly, carrying out his duties since the day he was appointed.

On this occasion, he did not fail.

“I think they want honesty,” Rubio answered. “They want to know where we’re going, where we’d like to go, where we’d like to go with them. So, that’s our hope. It’s an important conference. It’s my third time, twice, as Secretary of State. We’ll have a lot of members of Congress there as well. We’ll see them tomorrow as well. So, it’s important. And I think it’s at a defining moment. And I refer you back to even the speech or the statement I gave during my nomination hearing as Secretary of State.”

“The world is changing very fast right in front of us,” warned Rubio. “The old world is gone, frankly. The world I grew up in. And we live in a new era in geopolitics. And it’s going to require all of us to sort of re-examine what that looks like and what our role is going to be. And we’ve had many of these conversations in private with many of our allies. And they are our allies. And we need to continue to have those conversations. And I think Saturday, hopefully, and the meetings we’ll have there will move us in that direction.”

Contrast this stark message with the undoubtably soothing assurances of a slick, elitist politician like California Governor Gavin Newsom: “I hope, if there’s nothing else I can communicate today: Donald Trump is temporary. He’ll be gone in three years.”

While this message may be preferable to Rubio’s in many ways, EU leaders should take Newsom’s assurances with more than a grain of salt.

Like most successful dishonest and disingenuous statements, his words hold a grain of truth: Yes, Donald Trump is now serving his last term as President of the United States.

And if EU leaders believe that Donald Trump is the most existential threat to world peace, they obviously were asleep during the entire Biden Administration.

Under former President Biden, the world did not become a safer or more stable place.

On the contrary.

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Biden’s watch, lest anyone forget. The proxy terrorist forces of Iran, flush with new cash from a Biden foreign policy that, like his Democratic Party predecessor Barack Obama, was based on appeasement, launched the worst terrorist attack in history.

On a U.S. ally.

The U.S. suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Taliban, who marched over U.S. trained Afghan forces to take, in less than two days (and more like two hours) the capital city Biden officials predicted would hold for months if not years.

Under Joe Biden, the Chinese Communist Party’s Xi Jinping tried to take over Taiwan by election interference and threat of force.

The CCP-backed candidate in Taiwan’s last presidential election essentially used the campaign slogan “Vote for me and peace; vote for my opponent and war.”

Despite the threat, the CCP candidate was defeated.

But the CCP will try again to take over Taiwan. Xi Jinping has been as open about China’s designs on Taiwan as Vladimir Putin was about Ukraine.

Anyone who couldn’t see Vladimir Putin teeing up to invade Ukraine obviously wasn’t paying attention. Since 2014, and before, he was setting up the chess board to take Ukraine by force.

Getting EU countries depenendet on cheap Russian oil and gas, running a “color revolution” in Crimea, assassinating political dissedents in Russia and abroad, jailing journalists. Despite all this, leaders of the EU claim they had no idea what Putin was planning.

Well, Donald Trump did.

“Don’t build the Nordstream 2 pipeline,” he said. 

“Don’t outsource vital national security industries, including energy production to unfriendly nations,” he said.

No one in the EU listened.

Will they listen now?

Or bet on Gavin Newsom?

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)