Donald Trump loves dictators. Dictator love is not uncommon among American extremists and it’s nothing new on the far right. The Trumps of their time thought that Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler built the autobahn, and Franco was a good Catholic. The left had a flirtation with Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Ho but it was more ephemeral than the right’s dictator love. See, Kissinger, Henry.
A new book by Jacob Heilbrunn confirms my choice of the Kaiser of Chaos as a nickname for the 45th president*:
“For years, an imperialistic, hard-right European dictator unleashing bloodshed across the Continent cultivated supporters across the U.S. This despot claimed he was leading a “unique, anti-Western culture,” and, in so doing, cultivated allies and fellow travelers among conservatives across America, all of whom were disgusted by “corrupt Western liberal values” and who “scorned Western liberalism as a bankrupt ideology.” Nor was this appeal just rhetorical; as investigators later discovered, this right-wing revanchist bankrolled both propaganda efforts and agents on the ground, successfully turning Americans, especially on the right, to his cause.
To modern readers, the story is a familiar one — not least as it pertains to Donald Trump’s affections for Vladimir Putin, to say nothing of how Russian forces have cultivated conservative Americans from Tucker Carlson to the National Rifle Association and beyond. But the aforementioned case has nothing to do with Putin or with Trump. Instead, it took place a century ago, when conservatives across the U.S. flocked to the cause of Germany’s militarist tyrant, Kaiser Wilhelm II.”
That’s why I call Trump, the Kaiser of Chaos.
Trump’s dictator love was in full bloom as he hosted Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban at Mar-a-Doorn DBA Mar-a-Lago last week. It was an alt-summit than only the alt-right could love:
“Donald Trump heaped praise on Viktor Orbán while hosting the Hungarian prime minister at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orbán. He’s fantastic,” the former president told a crowd gathered for a concert at the Florida resort, as shown in a series of videos posted to Orbán’s Instagram account.
Trump added that the European autocrat is “a noncontroversial figure because he said, ‘This is the way it’s going to be,’ and that’s the end of it, right? He’s the boss and … he’s a great leader, fantastic leader. In Europe and around the world, they respect him.”
As always, the Kaiser of Chaos is projecting and talking about himself. In fact, Orban is widely scorned as the sole leader of a NATO nation who sided with Russia in its war with Ukraine. After hanging out with Trump, Orban predicted that the Trumpified GOP would starve Ukraine of aid causing them to lose the war.
Dictators like Orban have short memories. One would have thought that a Hungarian leader would loathe the Russians for imposing Communism on Hungary in 1948 followed by a brutal suppression of democratic yearnings in 1956. But dictators like Orban cower before a stronger strongman.
Since its inception in 2010, Orban’s government has been trying to revive the reputation of Hungary’s World War II leader Admiral Miklós Horthy. Horthy allied his country with a fellow fascist dictator during that conflict. This picture says it all:
Did they discuss making the trains run on time or using them to deport Hungarian Jews to death camps?
Repeat after me: Dictators like Horthy and Orban cower before a stronger strongman. In Horthy’s case it was Hitler, in Orban’s case, it’s the same dictator Trump grovels to: Vladimir Putin.
Only a weak and fearful man would grovel to a dictator. That describes Orban and Trump who are classic bullies who only kick down, never up.
Repeat after me: Dictators are weak and cower before a stronger strongman
One of the oddities of Trump’s dictator love is his fealty to North Korea’s diminutive despot Kim Jong Un. Trump describes their correspondence as “love letters” and regards them as his personal property. This creepy correspondence is one reason the Kaiser of Chaos was charged in the purloined papers case.
Perhaps Trump envies the third-generation North Korean dictator treating his country as a family business. In my futile quest for a strongman sideshow banner to use as the featured image for this post, I found this:
I dig the notion of Ivanka as a sword swallower and Don Junior as a fire eater. The analogy collapses with the snake charmer, none of the Trumps are charmers but they’re all snakes.
In politics, it’s important to judge candidates by the company they keep. Joe Biden prefers the company of our post-World War II allies. Donald Trump prefers palling around with dictators. I know which I prefer. To use a phrase popular in old movies, The Kaiser of Chaos is from hunger for loving the Hungarian dictator. I hope they both find themselves in deep goulash…
Repeat after me: Dictators are weak and cower before a stronger strongman.
The last word goes to 10cc with a song that I suggested in 2017 as the theme song of Team Trump’s dictator loving foreign policy:
