Trump and the dictators
What is it with Donald Trump and dictators?
In The Atlantic this month, former editor of the New Republic Franklin Foer suggests, “The question is born of disbelief. Adoration of the Russian leader, who murders his domestic opponents, kidnaps thousands of Ukrainian children, and interferes in American presidential elections, is so hard to comprehend.” But Trump and his disciples have been heaping praise on Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and other political strongmen for years.
On Xi Jingping:
Last year, in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox, Trump gushed about Xi, “President Xi is a brilliant man. If you went all over Hollywood to look for somebody to play the role of President Xi, you couldn’t find [them], there’s nobody like that: the look, the brain, the whole thing.”
On Vladimir Putin:
In the same interview, he lauded Putin as “very smart,” although he’s having a “bad year.”
On Recep Tayyip Erdoğan:
The following month, Trump wrote on Truth Social about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “He is a friend…he loves his Country and the great people of Turkey, which he has lifted to a new level of prominence and respect!”
On Viktor Orbán:
At a campaign rally, about Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Trump effused: “He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world,” before misidentifying him as the “the leader of Turkey.” Last summer, Orbán had joined Trump for a round of golf at his Bedminster club.
Trump has strategically allied himself with these dictators, his praise of them reflecting positively back on himself. “It’s good to have a good relationship with Putin and Xi and all these people they have lots of nuclear weapons,” Trump said. “And Kim Jong Un I have a good relationship with. He’s a tough, smart guy.” The implication, of course, is that only Trump can manage these difficult relationships, because he, like them, is strong and tough and smart. In the same speech, he refers to his political foes as “vermin” and ultimately more dangerous to the US than Russia, China, and North Korea.
Trump has quoted Hitler and retweeted Mussolini. He has repeatedly railed on the campaign trail that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Although he has denied being aware that those words recall Hitler’s, like he denied knowing David Duke or the Proud Boys, his former chief of staff John Kelly told CNN that Trump said, “But Hitler did some good things.” He particularly admired the loyalty that Hitler engendered from his military, fealty that he was dismayed to learn couldn’t be assured from his own generals.
For a while, we suspected that this praise of Putin and others was connected to real estate deals or other business. Trump’s self-dealing is well-documented, but the attachment here is clearly deeper than that. It’s apparent now that Trump and his followers share these dictators’ world view. As the journalist Jacob Heilbrunn argues in America Last, these dictators are ideologically aligned in the culture war to preserve traditional societal hierarchy against the corrosive force of the decadent left. Trump admires that they do what they like for power without any pretense of censoring themselves or paying lip service to the liberal concepts of liberty, pluralism, democracy, or the rule of law.
Recently, Jessica Tarlov, co-host on The Five on Fox, posted a video of herself speaking about political strategy in this election cycle. “I think for the Democrats, and I hate to say this because it’s such an important issue and one that really matters to me, I think we really gotta get away from talking about saving democracy…January 6th isn’t something that works for people anymore, that’s kind of baked in, that they think it was an insurrection, attempted coup, et cetera, and you have to talk about these frankly really boring things…preserving Social Security and Medicare, creating good jobs, protecting a woman’s right to choose, bodily autonomy, that’s what you really have to be talking about…”
She may be right about bread-and-butter issues that matter, but she’s dead wrong to suggest we should stop talking about “saving democracy.” It is the issue in this election, and we simply can’t stop talking about it. Trump’s plans for a second term should awaken the political consciousness of every person who truly loves this country and the liberal democratic ideals it stands for. America isn’t perfect but continuing its democratic backslide into an illiberal democracy or worse will dramatically alter the freedoms we take for granted at home as well as our position in the world, perhaps for generations.
The 2025 Presidential Transition Project (or Project 2025) is a collection of policy proposals to reshape the executive branch of the federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 presidential election. I like to think I’ve been paying attention, but this one escaped me.
Led by Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, Project 2025 is a concerted assault on the “deep state” that was left incomplete in Trump’s first term, only due to Trump’s inefficacy and lack of focus. This time around, The Heritage Foundation, in collaboration with over 100 ideological partners, including Turning Point USA, the Conservative Partnership Institute (with former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as senior partner), the Center for Renewing America led by former Trump-appointee Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, and America First Legal led by former Trump Senior Advisor Stephen Miller, plans to ensure that the new administration is fully prepared in the event of a Trump victory.
Heritage published its first Mandate for Leadership in January 1981. From its beginning, the Mandate placed an outsized focus on the Department of Justice, presenting “an explicit plan for reshaping public discourse on civil rights issues” and a recommendation that DOJ “halt its affirmative action policies to remedy past discrimination against women and other minorities.” Heritage refers to its most recent edition, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, as its “policy bible.” This edition was published earlier in an election cycle than any of its predecessors. Among other things, it declares that “freedom is defined by God, not man.”
The most recent effort envisions a swift takeover of the entire executive branch based upon the unitary executive theory, which argues that Article Two of the US Constitution vests executive power solely in the president, giving the president complete control over the executive branch. In 2019, Trump himself argued that Article Two granted him the “right to do whatever I want as president,” which aligns with his immunity defense in the election interference case against him.
Among its most significant goals, Project 2025 seeks to eliminate the independence of the DOJ, FCC, FTC, and other regulatory agencies. Independent, impartial law enforcement is a hallmark of a functioning democracy. In November, The Washington Post reported that deploying the military for domestic law enforcement and directing the DOJ to pursue Trump adversaries under the Insurrection Act of 1807 would be an “immediate priority” upon a second Trump inauguration in 2025.
Claiming that President Biden and the Democrats have “weaponized” the legal system against him, Trump has said he is willing to do the same to them, when he gets the chance. Project 2025 provides both the justification and the blueprint. It’s not difficult to see the irony in the fact that this aspect of Project 2025 is being led by Jeffrey Clark, a Trump co-defendant in the Georgia election racketeering prosecution and an unnamed co-conspirator in the federal prosecution of Trump for alleged election obstruction.
Heritage denies any such plans to invoke the Insurrection Act or target Trump’s political antagonists under Project 2025, but in its Mandate, federal workers at the DOJ, EPA, and USAID are nonetheless described as “radical Left ideologues” and “activists” who are “embedded” in their departments and form impediments to conservative change. In response to rising concerns about these claims, Fox News host Sean Hannity twice asked Trump at an Iowa town hall to deny that he would abuse presidential power to seek retribution against others, as he was reported to have privately told to friends and advisers. It was in this interview when Trump now famously replied that he would not be a dictator, “except for day one.”
The death of Alexei Navalny is a bleak reminder that liberal democracy is in decline or at risk around the world. Here at home, the US is no longer an international standard-bearer for democratic principles. A democracy index created by The Economist demoted America from a “full democracy” to a “flawed democracy” in 2016, where it has remained ever since. Issues around political polarization, falling support for democracy, electoral mistrust, and perceived corruption are the primary factors. Driven by Trump’s and the Republicans’ support for election denialism and their many other attacks on the government, a recent Pew survey found that more than a quarter of Americans now think that an autocracy would be a somewhat or very good form of government.
At CPAC last month, alt-right activist Jack Posobiec, promoter of the debunked “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory (recently revived by Elon Musk on X), was caught speaking the subtext out loud. As he introduced an opening day panel moderated by Steve Bannon, Posobiec announced, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here,” he said, holding his fist up to the cheering crowd. Bannon laughed and said, “Amen!” Posobiec added, “All glory is not to government. All glory to God.” Watch for yourself.
It’s too soon to tell, but there’s some evidence that Trump’s illiberal, anti-democratic threats may be hurting him with voters — independents, in particular. In response, as he does when he’s feeling backed into a corner, Trump has resorted to gaslighting. Just as he is now referring to the insurrectionists of January 6th assault on the Capitol as “patriots,” he is trying to make the argument that he is the savior of democracy and that Biden is, in fact, the threat.
At a campaign rally in Ohio this month, Trump warned of an end to democracy in the US if he loses the election. “I don’t think you’re going to have another election in this country, if we don’t win this election…certainly not an election that’s meaningful,” he said. As with much of his ominous and foreboding rhetoric, his precise meaning is ambiguous. But as democracy journalist Rachel Leingang wrote in The Guardian, only Trump can create an alternate reality where he is both the victim and the strongman, the persecuted and the protector. Only Trump can run for President invoking comparisons of himself to Al Capone.
In order to defeat Trump — and save our democracy — we need to lean into our liberal values, not away from them. Ultimately, we need more democracy, not less.
In the US, we share a history of rugged individualism and entrepreneurialism. But decades of market-friendly policies, pushed by both parties, have promoted growth and consumerism at the expense of solidarity and cooperation. The institutions that used to bring us together are now hotbeds of division — our public schools, our libraries, even our post offices — and our communities are being ripped apart. Liberals may have contributed to this situation inadvertently through policies that undervalued our shared purpose, but Trump, the Heritage Foundation, and their ilk have declared open warfare on these institutions, forcing all of us to pick a side.
There is something missing in our politics and in our culture that is making us susceptible to Trump. In The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) along with her essay Ideology and Terror (1953, updated 1958), Hannah Arendt observes that lonely societies turn to authoritarianism and nationalism. Through the use of isolation, authoritarian regimes create the conditions for loneliness and then appeal to people’s loneliness with ideological propaganda. Among the many components of ideological manipulation, she describes the insistence “upon a ‘truer reality’ that is concealed behind the world of perceptible things.” We call it gaslighting.
Trump and his authoritarian friends promise to restore national pride and greatness. They promise to restore the old ways of societies that can feel unmoored and adrift. “There are certain things which are more important than ‘me,’ than my ego — family, nation, God,” Viktor Orbán declared, never mind that they use illiberal, corrupt, and immoral tactics to achieve these “ideals.”
“Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely.” — Conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec, CPAC 2024
In his new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present,” Fareed Zakaria approaches the same issue from a different angle. While he argues that modern democratic liberalism has objectively generated the greatest gains in health, wealth, and well-being in human history, he also acknowledges that something is absent in our moral and civic life. Civic virtue and the common good are undervalued in society leaving people feeling alienated, powerless, and lonely. These are the feelings that Trump has both fostered and then bemoaned for electoral success.
Despite the polarized landscape, Biden has arguably delivered on enough Democratic priorities to be rewarded with a second term — on union busting and overtime pay, green energy and climate change, access to birth control, historically low unemployment, and higher wages, as well as bipartisan deals on gun safety, semiconductors, electoral security, and infrastructure — but his approval ratings are stuck at historic lows. Like Zakaria, David Brooks argues in his column this week that Biden has failed to speak to the absence of meaning, belonging, and recognition that people feel.
Many aspects of modern society naturally weaken the bonds among people — secularization, immigration, technology, globalization — and today’s society is experiencing these dynamics on overdrive, fueled by the corrosive forces of divisive social media, yawning income inequality, and hyper-partisan politics. Liberal politicians fighting populism and authoritarianism can’t just offer economic benefits; they also have to make the spiritual and civic case for our way of life. They must also rebuild the cohesive social bonds that hold us together, bonds that counter loneliness, bonds that can be valued and understood by all of us.
It’s not hard to see we need more of this.
