Trump assailed Barack Obama during the presidential campaign for a decline in US global leadership. It would not happen on his watch, he said. In the “America First” speech, then-candidate Trump told the audience that “our friends are beginning to think they can’t depend on us” because of Obama’s eight years of retrenchment. “We’ve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies, something that we’ve never seen before in the history of our country… The truth is they don’t respect us.” Trump said he’d change direction, but if such a trend existed under the Obama administration, he seems to have doubled down on it.
Blinded by the Might
Donald Trump scoffed at President Obama’s outreach to dictators. In 2011, he derided the president for catering to the authoritarian Chinese regime with “pretty please” diplomacy. In 2012, he blasted Obama for “bowing to the Saudi king.” In 2013, he mocked the president’s trip to the notoriously repressive Cuban island to meet Raul Castro. In 2014, he said Obama was foolish for calling Russia a “regional power,” for telling the Russians he would have more flexibility after his re-election, and for letting Putin reemerge on the world stage.
As president of the United States, Trump has shown a far greater affinity for “strongmen” than Obama ever did. Historically, our nation’s chief executives have chosen their words carefully when talking about dictatorial foreign leaders to avoid giving them more credibility than they deserve. Trump, by contrast, lavishes them with praise. Whether he is applauding Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte for his “unbelievable job” cracking down on drugs (a crackdown partly carried out by murdering suspects without a trial) or hailing authoritarian Turkish president Recep Erdoğan as a “friend” whom he is “very close to” (Erdoğan has launched sweeping efforts to jail political opponents and critics), Trump has a soft spot for tough guys.
Saudi Arabia is a prime example. After the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of Saudi hitmen in October 2018, the president struggled to bring himself to criticize the regime’s leadership. Even after intelligence community assessments reportedly pegged ultimate blame for the state-sponsored assassination on Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump didn’t want to condemn a man in whom he’d previously expressed “great confidence.” “I want to stick with an ally that in many ways has been very good,” the president told reporters, adding that the Saudi leader had denied involvement in the Khashoggi murder anyway, which seemed good enough for him.
The president acknowledged it was clearly the “worst cover-up of all time,” but he liked the crown prince. He liked him a lot. And he didn’t want to get on the Saudis’ bad side. “I am not going to talk about this anymore!” he vented to lieutenants. “Oil is at fifty dollars a barrel. Do you know how stupid it would be to pick this fight? Oil would go up to one hundred fifty dollars a barrel. Jesus. How fucking stupid would I be?” We really hoped the president wouldn’t go public with that explanation for staying silent. Then he did. Rather than criticize his friend the crown prince, Trump openly thanked him for keeping oil prices low, then later told reporters it was a reason he wouldn’t break with the Saudis.
He may also have been influenced by his son-in-law, Jared, who’d struck up a friendship with the crown prince. Following the killing, Jared was messaging Mohammed bin Salman and urged anyone who would listen to withhold judgment. “You’ve got to see it from his perspective,” he told administration colleagues. “He makes a point—‘My neighborhood is more dangerous than yours. I have Yemen. I have Iran. I have Syria.’ And he’s right!” Jared said with a laugh. “Can you imagine if we had something like Yemen at our southern border instead of Mexico? We’d be acting differently.” An appalled staff member on the other end of the exchange relayed it to others in the West Wing. Jared’s insinuation was that if we were in Saudi shoes, we’d murder journalists, too. NSC leaders were nonplussed.
The Khashoggi episode—made worse by weeks of presidential hand-wringing—damaged America’s credibility, yet it was hardly the worst case of the president’s submission to autocrats. That honor goes to Vladimir Putin. Under President Putin, Russia has reasserted itself on the world stage, challenging the United States at every opportunity and seeking to be a peer competitor. Trump, seemingly unfazed by the regime’s hostility toward Americans, has applauded Putin with regularity.
Most everyone in the administration felt strongly about punishing the Russians—hard—after their 2016 interference. Trump had a different view. While he may not have colluded with Russia as a presidential candidate, at a minimum he cheered them on. “Russia, if you’re listening,” he bellowed at a campaign event in July 2016, “I hope you’re able to find the thirty thousand [Clinton] emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by the press.” It was the first time in memory a US presidential candidate urged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his opponent. The same day, Russian hackers attempted to gain access to Secretary Clinton’s personal office, and in the following weeks, Trump was gleeful at the turmoil caused by Moscow’s ongoing leaks of other stolen emails.
After it became clear that the Kremlin was actively working to manipulate the election, Trump was nonetheless effusive in his praise for the dictator. “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him,” the candidate confessed to reporters. “I’ve already said, he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, oh, isn’t that a terrible thing—the man has very strong control over a country… But certainly, in that system, he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.” He relished Putin’s mockery of his defeated opponent after the election, tweeting: “Vladimir Putin said today about Hillary and Dems: ‘In my opinion, it is humiliating. One must be able to lose with dignity.’ So true!”
The president’s denial-turned-apathy to Moscow’s actions is why America responded with the diplomatic equivalent of a whimper to one of the biggest ever foreign affronts against our democracy. Of all the failures of Trump’s foreign policy, letting Russia off the hook is perhaps the most frustrating. The outgoing Obama administration imposed modest sanctions on Moscow, including expelling several dozen alleged Russian agents from the United States, but it left the rest to the incoming White House. Trump was reluctant to take further action that might offend Putin, with whom he hoped to develop a close working relationship. He hesitated to even raise the subject in conversations with the Russian leader, dumbfounding people on the inside.
I remember when Congress sanctioned Russia in summer 2017. Representatives vented their anger over how little the administration had done to hold Russia accountable, so they took matters into their own hands and passed legislation punishing the country. Though he would later take credit for the sanctions to claim our administration had been unusually tough on Moscow, Trump in fact was furious. He felt Congress was getting in the way of his goal of a warm friendship with the Kremlin. Russia responded to the sanctions by kicking out hundreds of US embassy staff from their country and seizing US diplomatic compounds. President Trump’s response was startling.
“I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down on payroll,” Trump told reporters about Putin’s move, without a hint of irony. “And as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go a large number of people, because now we have a smaller payroll. There’s no real reason for them to go back. So I greatly appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to cut our payroll of the United States. We’ll save a lot of money.”