Stephen M. Walt
If you’re still surprised by the chaos that U.S. President Donald Trump is fostering at home and abroad, I fear you weren’t paying sufficient attention over the past eight years. At this point in his long and twisted life, it is obvious that his vision of a perfect world is one where men with power and wealth (i.e., men like him) can do whatever they want, unconstrained by norms, laws, or a broader commitment to the public good. This attitude was most clearly revealed back in the 2016 campaign, when he boasted on tape that he just grabbed women wherever he wanted. Rules? Decency? Restraint? Public-mindedness? That’s for losers and dupes.
Given this core belief, it is hardly surprising that the leaders Trump admires and feels most comfortable with are autocrats with unchecked power. He praises Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “strong leader,” and rhapsodizes about how well he gets along with men (and, yes, they are all men) such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Even the democratically elected leaders he prefers—like Viktor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, or Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel—have strong illiberal or autocratic tendencies. Notice also that many of these leaders have used their control of the state to enrich themselves or their supporters; corruption is a nearly universal symptom in autocratic systems. This attitude helps explain Trump’s relationship with Elon Musk and some of the other tech bros; like Trump, they want to eliminate any rules that might prevent them from extracting as much wealth as possible from the rest of us. And it is right in line with his affinity for proud misogynists like the infamous Tate brothers.
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