Donald Trump is a buffoon, a narcissist and misogynist who has offended large segments of the American population with racist comments. He has so little impulse control that he erupted with a pathetic defense of the size of his penis in the middle of a presidential debate, and retweeted an unflattering picture of former rival Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) wife next to his own wife. At that point many doubted whether this “man baby” — as Jon Stewart called him — with an eighth-grade mentality could get much further without self-destructing. But he did.

With all this foul baggage and unpopular political positions on many issues, you have to wonder why so many liberals would insist on trying to discredit Trump, the GOP nominee, for the few things he says that are arguably true or sensible. At least presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was smart enough to try and take the “trade” issue away from him — thanks largely to Sen. Bernie Sanders‘s (Vt.) Democratic primary campaign — by changing her position and opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (although her delegates fought to keep this opposition out of the Democratic platform).

Since last week, Trump has come under heavy fire his response to a question as to whether he would “come to their immediate military aid” if NATO members including Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, were attacked by Russia. He said yes, but only “if they fulfill their obligations to us.” He asserted that he wants Europeans to pay for their own defense. Imagine that! I’m sure that the white working-class voters who will, as in most of the presidential elections of the past half-century, make up the swing voters this year will recoil in horror at this idea.

The European Union has a gross domestic product that is bigger than that of the United States (on a purchasing power parity basis). Most of these countries also provide their citizens with benefits that Americans don’t have, like real universal healthcare, subsidized child care, paid vacations averaging more than five weeks, and free or low-cost college tuition. Part of the reason that they get so much more for their tax dollars than we do is that they are not spending nearly as much on trying to police the world — although their security problems have increased considerably since Washington (with a lot of help from EU countries) turned the Middle East and North Africa into a hellish mess that exports more terrorism and refugees than ever before.

In any case, it’s a tough sell for working and middle-class voters here that their tax dollars should pay for Europe’s defense. Or that we should risk a nuclear war with Russia if it were to invade Estonia — which is the principle for which Trump has been so reviled for lately, for not defending, by the (liberal/conservative) foreign policy establishment.