The global anti-democracy movement, co-chaired by D. Trump and V. Putin

The art of the deal

Friends,

Late Sunday night, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán said Trump wouldn’t give a “penny” more to Ukraine, which “is why the war will end.”

Orbán was reporting on a private meeting he had last Friday with Trump at Trump’s private Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago.

Their meeting underscored Trump’s attempt to appear to be America’s president in exile — and a leader of the global anti-democracy movement.

In a video posted to Orbán’s Instagram account on Saturday, Trump called the Hungarian leader “a noncontroversial figure because he says, ‘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.”

Orbán is a right-wing nationalist who has waged an aggressive campaign against immigration and has declared that the West “is at war with itself.”

Orbán has eliminated rival political parties, captured the courts, taken over the press, gerrymandered voting districts to guarantee continuing electoral victories, and taken control of Hungary’s government. And just as Russia’s kleptocracy has maintained Putin’s wealth and power, Orbán has captured valuable factories and properties for his cronies, who have provided Orbán with the financial means of maintaining power.

As Trump told Orbán, Trump has instructed his Republican lapdogs in Congress not to give a penny more to Ukraine. As a result, given Republican control of the House of Representatives, American aid to Ukraine is being choked off.

Presumably, Putin could not be happier. A Trump victory in November will deliver Ukraine to Putin — and perhaps far more.

What is Trump getting for his efforts on behalf of Putin? As NBC News’s Dan De Luce and Kevin Collier reported on February 26:

Russia is already spreading disinformation in advance of the 2024 election, using fake online accounts and bots to damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, according to former U.S. officials and cyber experts. The dissemination of attacks on Biden is part of a continuing effort by Moscow to undercut American military aid to Ukraine and U.S. support for and solidarity with NATO, experts said.

In his State of the Union address last Thursday night, President Biden warned:

Ukraine can stop Putin, if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons they need to defend itself … But now, assistance to Ukraine is being blocked by those who want to walk away from our world leadership. Wasn’t long ago when a Republican president named Ronald Reagan thundered, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” Now, now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want. That’s a quote. A former president actually said that, bowing down to a Russian leader.

On February 22, Miklós Szánthó, director of the conservative Hungarian think tank Center for Fundamental Rights, which promotes “Judeo-Christian social traditions,” gave a speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor, Maryland. Szánthó told the audience, “The cult of woke and its priests in the mainstream press, Hollywood, the music industry, and corporate boardrooms are a clear and present danger to our way of life and even our security.” He went on to claim Hungary understands what the U.S. is going through because “woke is just a new form of communism. It is a civilizational threat.”

Szánthó closed his speech by announcing that “together we will make America great again, together we will make Europe great again, together we will make this world sane again, together we will win and they will lose.”

The Conservative Political Action Conference has turned itself into a center of the global anti-democracy movement and anointed Trump its head.

Trump surrogate Jack Posobiec kicked off the conference by saying, “Welcome to the end of democracy. We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on January 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it and replace it with this, right here.” The crowd went wild.

Another pillar of the global anti-democracy movement, who received a “rock-star welcome” at CPAC, was El Salvador’s far-right president, Nayib Bukele.

Since his election in 2019, Bukele has declared a state of emergency in El Salvador and promised to crack down on gangs and criminal activity.

According to Amnesty International, under Bukele’s leadership, Salvadoran authorities have committed “massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment, and at least 18 people have died in state custody.” The human rights organization has also accused Bukele’s government of using “torture” and “enforced disappearances” in its supposed gang purge.

During his CPAC speech, Bukele appeared to advise America’s next president to follow in his footsteps.

“The next president of the United States must not only win an election, he must have the vision, the will, and the courage to do whatever it takes,” Bukele said. “He must be able to identify the underlying forces that will conspire against him. These dark forces are already taking over your country.”

At the end of his speech, Bukele encouraged audience members to “put up the fight because in the end it will be worth it. It has been for us, and you will have your country back."

Argentinian President Javier Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” and the leader of the country’s Libertarian Party, also made an appearance at CPAC.

Milei’s combative style and embrace of conspiracy theories have drawn comparisons to Trump, which Milei has welcomed. He has called climate change a socialist plot and downplayed the atrocities of Argentina’s bloody military dictatorship of the 1970s and 1980s. Since taking office, Milei has purged thousands of government jobs and implemented “severe reforms” that have hurt the country’s struggling economy.

Milei concluded his remarks at CPAC by telling the audience to stand against socialism, regulations, and the idea of market failure.

CPAC also gave the podium to Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s ardently nationalist far-right party Vox, which is explicitly anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQ+ rights. Abascal is currently under investigation for comments he made to an Argentinian newspaper suggesting that a time would come when Spaniards would want to see the country’s current socialist prime minister “strung up by his feet.”

During his CPAC speech, Abascal claimed that Spain suffers “at the hands of a government of communists and socialists” who “protect and support the terrorism of Hamas” and make alliances with the “criminal regimes of Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Abascal concluded by saying, “To move forward, to make the West great again, I want to say here today that you should all be assured that the Spanish patriots are ready to fight side-by-side the American patriots.”

While all this was going on, Tucker Carlson headed to Russia to give Putin an exclusive interview to spout his propaganda — unimpeded by questions about Putin’s atrocities in Ukraine, his murders of political opponents, or the sham of the Russian presidential election. Carlson also provided a Potemkin-village view of Moscow’s subway and a department store — propaganda Russia couldn’t have paid for.

My friends, the 2024 election is not a contest between Democrats and traditional Republicans or between progressives and traditional conservatives.

Republicans in Congress, CPAC, Tucker Carlson, and Victor Orbán have made it abundantly clear that the upcoming election pits democracy and freedom against what is fast becoming a global anti-democracy movement, co-chaired by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.