Donald Trump has flitted erratically from one position to another on a variety of political beliefs, but he has hewed with remarkable consistency to one: Dictators are good. Trump has maintained this belief throughout his long public career, and he asserted it once again in a speech in New Hampshire Saturday.
In the address, Trump cited Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, and North Korean hereditary communist monarch Kim Jong-un as authorities on his own superiority. “Viktor Orbán, the highly respected prime minister of Hungary, said Trump is the man who can save the western world,” exclaimed Trump. Putin “says that Biden’s, and this is a quote, politically motivated persecution of his political rival is very good for Russia because it shows the rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.” As for Kim, “He’s not so fond of this administration, but he’s fond of me.”
Trump is not merely making a Kissingerian argument that these foreign leaders maintained peaceful international relations with him as president. He is citing them specifically as experts on domestic American governance. They know how to run a society, Trump boasts, and they see in Trump a strong leader in the same mold.
Trump has been articulating this belief for decades. In a 1990 interview, he praised the Chinese government for crushing pro-democracy demonstrations, comparing it favorably with the “weak” policies of the United States government. “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” he said, “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”
As president, Trump consistently defied democratic norms. He believed, and continues to believe, it is right and proper for the president to control the Justice Department to harass his enemies and protect his friends, to punish owners of independent media, and to deny the possibility that he could ever legitimately lose a democratic election.
Conservatives have been insisting that Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are no concern, because the American system would never permit a president to abuse his power so nakedly (and also that Joe Biden has already done it).
Even if you ignore the obvious contradiction in their arguments — It can’t happen here, Biden did it, too — and you also ignore extensive evidence Trump has learned from his inability to completely subvert democracy and is planning to evade those obstacles, there is another serious problem that arises from his authoritarian envy. Trump is undermining the long American tradition of rhetorical tributes to democracy.
From the beginnings of the republic, when the United States was not really a democracy, American politicians have always proclaimed the superiority of the American system by way of contrast with foreign despotism. The foundation of the American civic creed is that we are blessed to be free of kings and tyrants.
Trump has inculcated a new idea in his followers. The tyrants of the world are smart and tough, and the democratically elected leaders are dumb and weak. The best kind of ruler is the strongest, and strength means crushing opposition in all its forms.
Conservatives can pretend Trump has no chance of fulfilling these autocratic dreams. But the dream itself is its own kind of dagger at the republic’s throat.
