I live very close to one of the USAF's largest European airbases.

While Trump was trolling European leaders about their security posture (by threatening to relieve them of sovereign territory which the US already has extensive access to) the USAF was already moving assets in the opposite direction to the middle east (this was mid-january).

It's fairly easy to work out what's happening if you ignore the orange man and listen to what serious people are saying, what they've briefed on, how they contradict one another, and where the assets are moving.

Obviously European leaders have to pretend to take the orange man seriously, but the reaction in the media was bordering on hysterical.