YET ANOTHER REASON FOR TRUMP’S POPULARITY: “Europeans are obsessed with Donald Trump — The loud-mouthed billionaire businessman embodies what Europeans love to hate about the U.S.,” sniffs a haughty Politico-Europe author as he dives for the fainting couch:

PARIS — The media here has got a Continental strain of Trump fever.

Since the real estate mogul made a shocking surge to the top of the Republican presidential polls in the U.S., Europe has fixated on the unapologetic showman, churning out a steady stream of news coverage and commentary.

On Thursday, France’s Libération newspaper devoted its entire front page to a photo of a snarling Donald, with an inch-high headline that read: “Donald Trump — The American Nightmare.”

The Continent has its share of outrageous personalities on the political right of center: Britain’s Nigel Farage, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, France’s family Le Pen. But Trump fits many perceived European stereotypes of America: excess, vulgarity, ignorance, superficiality, love of wealth, to name a few.

“Trump represents the America that we love to hate,” said Marie-Cécile Naves, a sociologist and author of “Le nouveau visage des droites américaines” (“The New Face of the American Right”). “He is our negative mirror image, a man we see as brutal, who worships money and lacks culture — someone who lets us feel a bit superior about being European.”

They have learned nothing and forgotten nothing — not the least of which how swell it worked on both sides of the Atlantic when America elected a Europe-approved candidate in 2008:

Obama Berlin 2008
Spectators listen to the speech of of the U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., seen on the screen, in front of the Victory Column in Berlin, Thursday, July 24, 2008. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)