When Donald Trump shocked the world and won the presidential election (with a little help from his Russian friends), leaders around the globe immediately sprang into action in an attempt to figure out how to interact with a guy who had spent most of his campaign flaming global alliances. Justin Trudeau whisked the president’s favorite child off to the theater. Emmanuel Macron rolled out the red carpet and presented Trump with an array of shiny objects, including a military parade. Angela Merkel held Trump’s hand and attempted to explain complex concepts in a way she thought his small brain could understand. (Spoiler: she was sorely mistaken.) Sure, candidate Trump was bombastic and unpredictable, attacking pacts between allies like NAFTA and NATO and praising dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Rodrigo Duterte. But the hope was that once in office, he’d mellow out a little. Of course, that was all some months ago—by now, that dream is thoroughly down the toilet. And this weekend, the president delivered a final symbolic flush as he soberly told Face the Nation, “I think the European Union is a foe,” and singled out Germany for blame.

“I respect the leaders of those countries,” the former real-estate developer said. “But—in a trade sense, they’ve really taken advantage of us, and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren’t paying their bills and, you know, as an example a big problem with Germany.” (Likely for the sake of appearances, given that people already think Russia has Trump wrapped around its finger, the president added that he sees Vlad as a foe “in certain respects,” and China as “a foe economically.”)

Unsurprisingly, the comments did not go over very well in Germany, where frustration with President McTwitter is at an all-time high following his decision to hit the E.U. with tariffs on “national security” grounds, and a NATO summit breakfast outburst in which Trump accused Germany of being “totally controlled” by Russia. “We can no longer completely rely on the White House,” Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, said in an interview on Monday. “To maintain our partnership with the U.S.A. we must re-adjust it. The first clear consequence can only be that we need to align ourselves even more closely in Europe.” He added that “Europe must not let itself be divided, however sharp the verbal attacks and absurd the tweets may be.”

Speaking of absurd tweets, Trump let rip an equally deranged communiqué in the wee hours of Monday morning claiming that things with NATO were just peachy, thanks for asking:

That, of course, came days after he attacked fellow NATO members, seemingly threatened to leave the alliance, and then praised himself for supposedly getting everyone to up their commitments, a claim that Emmanuel Macron swiftly shot down as more or less the ravings of a confused old man. Given the whiplash, it’s hard to blame Germany for taking a step back.