The vanishing act was classic Trump—dominating the news cycle, insulting and upstaging his hosts, to say nothing of U.S. soldiers and veterans. In the United States, Twitter blew up with anger at the president, and there was much chatter about how conservative media would have responded if a Democratic president had skipped a war commemoration because of a little rain. But here in Europe, Trump’s political theater underscored exactly what Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and other European leaders are increasingly concerned about: Europe is being isolated, if not hung out to dry, by the United States.

On Sunday, the front page of France’s Journal du Dimanche, a weekly newspaper, bore the headline: “Why Trump Threatens Us.” The “us” in question was both France and Europe. Coinciding with Trump’s visit, Le Monde has been running a series on the growing transatlantic divide, beginning with “The Europe–United States Divorce: Tensions in the Western Family.” French commentators noted that Trump was also shunning the Paris Peace Forum, a kind of Davos for multilateralism that opened Sunday. While it was inaugurated by Macron, Merkel, and the secretary-general of the United Nations, Trump was outside Paris at another American military cemetery, where he offered brief remarks.

The sense of Europe’s and the world’s growing distance from the United States, under a president who is a committed unilateralist, also echoed in the optics of the commemoration on Sunday morning. While Macron, Merkel, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Justin Trudeau, and more than 80 world leaders and leaders of major world organizations arrived in buses, walking solemnly in the rain together to take their place under the Arc de Triomphe, Trump arrived solo, in his own motorcade.

Others also arrived alone, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin, who was the last to arrive. And there may have been security concerns involved. But Trump’s solitary arrival felt even more freighted, yet another sign of how under Trump, the United States intends to go it alone, pulling out of international multilateral treaties and starting trade wars with allies. French television commentators called it “symbolic” that the U.S. president shunned the group, and also noted, as Trump stiffly took his place next to Merkel, that “he didn’t look very smiley.” He was more smiley when Putin arrived. The Russian president gave Trump a thumbs-up and a brief, friendly pat on the arm.

In a somber speech beneath the Arc de Triomphe, Macron recalled how with World War I, Europe almost committed suicide. He said “old demons” were resurfacing and history was threatening to repeat itself, and threatening Europe’s history of peace. He decried “the selfishness of countries that regard only their own interests,” which sounded like a remark clearly aimed at the United States. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” he said. “Nationalism is its betrayal. In saying ‘Our interests first and others don’t matter,’ we erase what is most precious to a nation, what makes it live, what makes it great, what is most important: its moral values.” It was impossible not to hear Macron’s words, before so many other world leaders, as aimed at Trump, a sign of how the rest of the world is contending with the repercussions of “America First.”