There was an interesting article in Thursday’s New York Times about how Trump’s authoritarian tendencies have given the green light to dictators around the world to clamp down on democratic freedoms in their own countries. And it really made me think. Because if you look at what’s happening around the world, a case can certainly be made that Trump has unleashed a wave of anti democratic purges and violence throughout the world.
In the Philippines, we have the odious Rodrigo Duterte, who has made it his personal mission to crack down on “drug dealers,” which in reality has meant sending death squads to execute thousands of poor Filipino drug addicts. And what does Trump think of Duterte? When he met with him in the Philippines in November, he said they had a “great relationship,” and nary a word was mentioned about human rights or Duterte’s campaign of extrajudicial killings.
And I think a case can fairly be made that Duterte has simply taken a cue from Trump’s crypto-fascist rhetoric, his demagoguery and his rejection of liberal values. I mean it’s just plain impossible to imagine Obama meeting with Duterte in the Philippines and not mentioning his reign of terror, or human rights more broadly.
So that’s the Philippines.
Where else can we turn? In Egypt, Trump has showered praise on strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. El-Sisi illegally seized power from democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, and he has cracked down on dissidents and jailed opposition leaders with impunity since then. And Trump said that El-Sisi has “done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation.”
Really, Donald? A fantastic job in a difficult situation? Because I’m not sure if that’s how I’d characterize sending thugs to beat up one of your potential opponents in Egypt’s upcoming March election. Or detaining another in a hotel for a month and threatening to bring trumped-up corruption charges against him. And on and on it goes.
It’s so bad in Egypt, in fact, that all four original challengers to El-Sisi for the March elections have now dropped out of the race, and the only person remaining is an ally of el-Sisi and has zero chance of winning.
So that’s Egypt.
In Turkey, strongman Recep Erdogan has engineered a brutal crackdown on dissidents following a failed coup attempt in 2016. This is interesting, because for a while it seemed like Turkey was pulling closer to the western orbit, and there was even talk of the country joining the European Union. But in the last few years Turkey under Erdogan has regressed back to its military-cum-authoritarian roots.
And what has Trump said about Erdogan?
“We have a great friendship, as countries and I think we’re right now as close as we’ve ever been,” said The Donald. He followed that up by saying at their September bilateral meeting in New York that Erdogan was: “running a very difficult part of the world. He has evolved very strongly, and frankly he’s getting very high marks.”
I mean Jesus H. Christ Donald. Sending elite police troops to bash in the heads of pro-democracy student protesters in the Ankara streets gets Erdogan high marks from you? I’d hate to imagine who or what gets low marks.
So that’s Turkey.
And that, finally and not surprisingly, brings us to Russia, the dictatorship and oligarch-run kleptocracy that has been dominated by the ultimate strongman, Vladimir Putin, for nearly 20 years now. Do I really need to lay out all of Putin and Russia’s crimes? I mean we all know they probably meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, helping to throw it to Trump. And their cyberwarfare attempts to subvert American and European democracies are well known.
And we all know that just today, House Republicans released a biased memo charging that the FBI and Justice Department acted wrongly in seeking to investigate Trump and his staff’s connections to Russia. It’s just more posturing by the relentlessly ruthless and spiteful Republicans, is what it is.
There’s also the fact that under Putin, Russia has attempted to regain its former Soviet domination of what’s known as the “Near Abroad,” by intervening in nearby states such as Ukraine and working to upend the Baltics. Putin’s also backing Hafez al-Assad in his brutal and bloody drive to reconquer Syria. The Syrian civil war is now in its seventh year, hundreds of thousands are already dead, and Putin keeps adding fuel to the fire.
So given all this, what has The Donald said about Vladimir?
In 2014, Trump said Putin contacted him when he traveled to the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and he was “very nice.”
In 2015, before becoming President, Trump said: “”I think I’d get along very well with Vladimir Putin, I just think so. “People say ‘what do you mean?’ I think I’d get along well with him.”
In 2017, soon after becoming President, Trump said during a notorious Super Bowl interview with Bill O’Reilly that he “respected Putin.” And then he defended Putin when O’Reilly called him a killer.
“There are a lot of killers,” Trump says. “Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?”
Now I do give a few points to Trump for being so open about the amount of bloodshed the US has wreaked on foreign soils throughout history. But the answer to a question about Putin being a killer is not to defend him, or to equate him with US killers, but to condemn violence and totalitarianism in all forms. So that’s another swing and miss by The Donald.
So that’s Russia.
Now I think our brief survey of strongmen and authoritarian leaders around the world has revealed one very important truth: if you crack down on democracy, jail and beat your opponents, and generally subvert freedom in your nation, Donald Trump likes you, and he wants to be your friend.
To which I say, with friends like these, who needs enemies?
