Trump’s fondness for oppressive strongmen

Kim Jong Un runs the world’s largest prison camp — it’s called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.Wielding fear, torture, and public executions, Kim demands complete, slobbering loyalty. North Koreans have no freedom of speech, no access to outside information, and they are subjected to a state-run system of brainwashing.Kim starves his people to death and sends them off to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine. He bars his people from fleeing this prison nation. He tortures anyone who tries, and kills and imprisons the families of those who succeed. And President Donald Trump says, “I get along with Kim Jong Un very well. He’s going to be fine.”Shocking on one level, this is also standard fare from Trump, who regularly expresses friendship with authoritarians, warmth toward strongmen, and admiration or envy for dictators.Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Erdogan, and Rodrigo Duterte are all recognized as oppressors of their own people, and all seem just fine in Trump’s book.Trump’s fondness for strongmen is one of his most baffling traits. The liberal media has often misread this vice as something more dangerous or salacious than it actually is. Still, it’s a disturbing characteristic for the elected leader of a free people.The men Trump admires In his first term, Trump fell head over heels for Kim. “He wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters,” Trump said. “We fell in love.” The hard-line communist leader of China, Xi Jinping, was also “a very good friend of mine,” Trump said. Trump called him “a man who truly loves his country.”Specifically, Trump praised Xi for his absolute political power: “He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great,” Trump said before joking, “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.” “I love China,” Trump said in 2024. “I respect China greatly. I very much respect President Xi. I got to know him very well and I liked him a lot. He’s a strong guy.”“The press hates it when I call President Xi ‘brilliant’,” Trump said on another occasion. “Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s a brilliant guy whether you like it or not.”Trump’s fondness for Russia’s Vladimir Putin has long been obvious. He calls Putin “a great guy” and a “terrific person.”“You look at Putin, who is absolutely having a great time,” Trump said once. “Russia is like, I mean, they’re really hot stuff…. what he’s done for Russia is really amazing.”In 2015, Trump said of Putin, “in terms of leadership, he is getting an ‘A.’”Trump has made dozens of comments like this about Putin, going back decades. And he’s regularly defended Putin by denigrating his own country.Trump’s Putin Apology Tour began during the Super Bowl halftime interview in Trump’s first weeks in office. Bill O’Reilly asked Trump why he was so bullish on improving relationships with Russia, given that Putin was “a killer.”Trump replied with an answer befitting an Ivy League professor: “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent?”In Helsinki in July 2018, Trump said he gave no more credence to the FBI’s accusation of Russian election meddling than he did to Putin’s “extremely strong and powerful” denials.“I think the United States has been foolish,” Trump also said, to explain poor U.S.-Russia relationships. “I think we have both made some mistakes.”Trump praised Filipino strongman Rodrigo Duterte specifically for his brutal war on drugs that included total disregard for basic human dignity. “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job on the drug problem,” Trump said. “Many countries have the problem, we have a problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”Likewise, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan was a “good friend” and a “great leader,” according to Trump. Trump called Erdogan “strong,” as well.Diagnosing Trump It’s not easy to explain why an American president would talk this way.In 2017, in the depths of the Russiagate hysteria, the liberal media decided Putin had kompromat on Trump. That is, they assumed Trump was being so nice to Putin because Putin was blackmailing Trump, probably with information about Trump and Russian prostitutes. (This really was the theory.)While all such conspiracy theories are difficult to disprove, it seems like a good place to apply Occam’s Razor: One ought to gravitate toward the simplest account that explains all of the available evidence. The Russia theory would require not only Putin to have a “pee tape” of Trump, but also Duterte, Erdogan, Xi, and Kim to hold compromising information on the president.The simpler explanation is a nearly psychological one: Trump is simply fond of strongmen and dictators.At campaign rallies, especially in 2016, Trump advocated police violence against protesters who disrupted his rallies — telling the cops they should be rougher on arrestees. He said libel laws needed to be stiffened, essentially cracking down on public criticism of people in power.In a perhaps telling moment in 2016, Trump called the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests “a riot.”Put it all together, and the pattern is that Trump admires and even envies national leaders who rule with an iron fist, and he disdains dissidents.If you understand Trump as a man with idle daydreams of being a dictator, you can reconcile a lot of the contradictions in the image of the man.Resistance liberals still paint Trump as an “authoritarian,” who will end democracy. The liberal media dropped that portrayal long ago. After all, what sort of dictator gets impeached twice, loses reelection, gets challenged by his own party, wins the popular vote, has his signature policies struck down by Supreme Court justices he appointed, and is undermined by both bureaucrats and his own appointees?What’s more, Trump’s actual record is not really more authoritarian than that of other presidents or the opponents he faced. Joe Biden’s administration leaned on Big Tech companies to silence unapproved opinions and facts about COVID and the vaccines, while creating a special division in the Justice Department to persecute pro-lifers.Barack Obama smashed precedent and used the Espionage Act dozens of times to go after journalists and their sources. His Director of National Intelligence explained, “My background is in the Navy, and it is good to hang an admiral once in a while as an example to the others.” The Bush Administration created and implemented the PATRIOT Act.TRUMP IS BLINDED BY HIS PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH KIMWhen it comes to infringing on civil liberties, Trump is in the same league as his predecessors, not the same league as the foreign dictators he admires. Where he is extraordinary is his rhetoric and his apparent desires.Trump isn’t Xi, but he envies Xi. He isn’t Erdogan, but he likes to talk like Erdogan. He certainly isn’t Kim, but he understands where Kim is coming from. And that should be disturbing enough.