Throughout 2017 and into 2018, I hoped that a moment would come when Republicans would see Donald Trump clearly. But years ago, I accepted that the scales-falling-from-the-eyes revelation will never come for the MAGA faithful. They are too invested.

Still, as a recent Chicago Tribune report found, a small but significant percentage of 2024 Trump voters either regret their vote or have serious concerns about the way things are going. When elections are decided by just a few hundred thousand votes in seven states, those defections are crucial.

Trump has never believed in the principles that NATO was founded to promote and preserve. He doesn’t feel affinity for liberal democracy.

Trump doesn’t respond to naked aggression the way normal people do. He gets excited. Recall that when Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, Trump swanned into the Mar-a-Lago dining room gushing over what a “genius” Putin was.

Most hostility to the “neocon” agenda stems from the belief that the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan failed, but Trump doesn’t even endorse the goals. He doesn’t believe in promoting democracy at all, even if it costs us nothing.

Trump called former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “far left lunatic” who had destroyed Canada with COVID mandates. He lambasted Volodymyr Zelensky (but not Putin) for failing to hold elections.

It’s hard to think of an occasion when Trump has criticized any authoritarian for their repression.

It’s Trump’s lack of belief in liberal democracy, as much as stinginess, that explains his coolness toward Ukraine. What seems blindingly obvious to every liberal democratic leader — that brute conquest by a quasi-fascist regime against a fellow democracy demands a forceful response — is not at all clear to Trump.

What’s in it for me? he keeps asking.

With the snatching of Maduro in Venezuela, we can see the full contempt Trump harbors toward democracy. The United States went to considerable risk and expense to capture Maduro — but there isn’t even a pretense of pivoting now to help restore democracy to Venezuela. It’s all about the oil.

Trump behaves as a bullying autocrat at home; why would he uphold the rule of law and democracy abroad?

And now we come to Greenland. There are several layers to this betrayal of American and Western values:

n To even threaten military force against a peaceful ally violates common sense, as well as the norms and rules that America spent decades enshrining in international law and practice.

n To do so because a private entity in a third country hurt his little feelings by declining to give him the Nobel Peace Prize is cringe-inducing and frankly borderline insane.

n To insult every ember of NATO is to alienate the United States from the world.

n To admit, in public, that because he is pouting over not winning the Peace Prize, he will no longer prioritize peace is as clear a confession as can be that his true interest was never peace.

Trump has contempt for democratic norms.

He wants to move America’s pieces to the other side of the chessboard, alongside those whose systems and methods he finds more congenial — Russia, China, El Salvador, Turkey and Hungary. NATO leaders at last see it. Perhaps it will also dawn on some critical American voters.