Elio Di Rupo sat before me in his quiet office in Mons. His tone, however, was unusually pointed. As soon as I mentioned Donald Trump's name, he made it clear: he'd had enough of Europe's sugar-coated diplomacy towards what he called "an ignoramus like Trump."
"This is not just an American story – it's our story too," he said.
We were sitting in an office lined with books about Europe when the former Belgian Prime Minister leaned forward, hands crossed in front of him.
"This will last ten, 20, maybe 30 years; people are making the mistake of analysing Trump's contradictions, his theatrics, even his vulgarities, but it's not about him; he's the symptom of a disease, and it's metastasising," he declared. "He's just the bloodied tip of a spear – a symbolic figure of a movement that is not new and believes America must dominate again. And it's a very, very angry movement."
Trump's resurgence, he argues, is rooted in a vast pool of resentment.
To Di Rupo, 'Trumpism' is not simply about the white working class – that's the branding. The actual movement, he says, is libertarian, corporate, dynastic: a return to the age of the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, but with fewer cigars and far more algorithmic manipulation.
Behind the MAGA flags lies a billionaires' utopia: tax breaks, broken unions, dismantled protections. "This is a carefully designed machine," he warned. "There are think tanks, funders, and strategies. It's not chaos. It's a project."
Even elite universities like Harvard are in the crosshairs. "They'll be told what to teach, or be defunded. That's not a communication strategy, that's authoritarianism."
Illustration of Donald Trump. Credit: Adam Tamim
Fox in the henhouse
The rules-based international system, he says, is being torched. "Trump doesn't care about NATO. He doesn't care about the rule of law or democracy. He cares about money. About absolute deregulation. It's libertarianism with 'fox-in the henhouse' logic: everyone is free, but we all know what happens when the fox and the hens share the same coop."
He points to Trump's open disdain for the European Union, which he regards as "a bureaucratic mess, obsessed with rules and taxes." In contrast, the US under Trump offers freedom to pollute, to exploit and to profit.
"Pharmaceutical giants are already threatening to relocate to the US. Unless Europe hikes drug prices. The message is clear: simplify, or be sidelined."
Elio Di Rupo in an exclusive interview with The Brussels Times. Credit: Anas El Baye
Europe's crossroads
When asked about Europe, he doesn't hesitate: "We're confused."
Without mincing words, Di Rupo insists there is no unified stance. "Trump is running circles around us, playing divide-and-conquer perfectly." He's particularly outraged by Poland's alignment with Washington over Brussels, and Hungary's open defiance of core European values.
"We allowed these fractures when we expanded from 15 to 25 Member States, gave everyone a vote, but kept the rule of unanimity. Now, [Hungarian PM] Viktor Orbán can block everything. It's madness."
"We wanted to be more Catholic than the Pope," he adds wryly, referencing how even Biden's Keynesian interventionism has put Europe's austerity orthodoxy to shame.
When I asked him if there's any path forward, he reluctantly names a few potential figures – French President Emmanuel Macron, who he says "has European ambition, though is terrible in his own country," and the future German Chancellor Friedrich Merz , though currently embattled. But the true responsibility, he insists, lies with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
"She has a historic responsibility to save Europe. If she doesn't rise to it, we'll see a social and economic regression like nothing since the Second World War."
Still, doubts linger. "She's German first – like Merkel," he says. "They can rise above national interest, but rarely do."
He calls for a new Franco-German engine to steer Europe through this storm. "Otherwise, we'll be passengers on someone else's train. Again."
But the conversation becomes even more revealing when it turns to voters.
"Trump's base isn't illiterate – they're uncultivated. They don't know history. And democracy isn't the shield we pretend it is. Hitler and Mussolini came through the elections. Democracy must be made to live. And right now, it’s being strangled."
Trump's doctrine includes the "re-masculinisation" of society, attacks on LGBTQ+ freedoms, and the silencing of critical academia. "It's all of a piece. And it's not random. It's systematic. It's funded. It's deliberate," he noted. And yet, the European far-right cheers it on, he regrets.
What can we do?
"We need to act like the Chinese," he said. "Defend our economy. Invest. Think strategically."
And diplomacy? "Diplomacy is dead. Trump has no interest in balance, peace or rules. You can try to sit down and have a coffee with him – it won't change a thing."
This isn't about policy. It's about ideology. And Europe, he says, has yet to understand what it's up against. "We must respond. Or we will be dismantled, piece by piece, law by law, election by election."
The post-Trump world is Trump's world now
The post-Trump world, Di Rupo suggests, is not post-Trump at all. "It's his world now. And if Europe fails to defend itself, it will not simply be a victim of history – it will be its accomplice."
Di Rupo's warning was anything but diplomatically worded. It was blunt – sometimes even unsettling – and unusually direct for him, make us reflect on how we perceive the current world crisis. Are we being naïve about who Trump is, and what he truly represents?
Ultimately, his words challenge the very foundations of European values – whatever that might mean – and raise the question of whether our democracies still possess the strength to defend themselves.
