Project1461

July 12, 2025 - Day # 174

Trump’s Troubles

With respect to other nations, Donald Trump likes strong leaders. He likes leaders who call the shots, control their own country’s direction, put their foot down and get things done. He likes leaders who act decisively, no pussy-footing around, tough guys (yes, it’s almost always guys) who see the world as black and white with no room for gray. He likes guys who, by force of will, push ahead, norms and whatever-the-rest-of-the-world-might-think be damned. It’s their way or the highway. Guys like Xi Jinping of China and Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Vladimir Putin of Russia and Viktor Orban of Hungary and President Javier Milei of Argentina and President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and former President of the Phillipines Rodrigo Duterte. Basically, Donald Trump loves him some despots and strongmen and fancies himself as one of them.

Viktor Orban of Hungary

Kim Jong Un, and to a lesser degree, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, are all dictators who rule absolutely. Both Putin and Jinping are subject to “re-approval”, but those happenings are mere rubber stamped formalities allowing them to retain power. Orban, during his now fifteen years of rule, has orchestrated constitutional changes, along with voting and judicial purges which virtually guarantee his continuation in power. Milei, Bukele and former President Duterte actually face/faced voters, but while in office have and did skirt their respective constitutions and/or laws in such a way as to be akin to dictators while in office.

There is a difference, though, which allows the US to stand out from these other nations. Russia, China, North Korea, Argentina, The Philippines, Hungary and El Salvador; all have endured more recent existential upheavals, whereas the United States has maintained its democratized traditions for 250 years, with the severest test of its governance, the US Civil War, ending 160 years ago. Those democratic traditions have sustained America through the ebb and flow of conservatism, liberalism, libertarianism, isolationism, progressive and back, but has always recentered itself by its citizen’s general recognition of the centering rally point; our Constitution and the rule-of-law determined by it. As imperfect as it has been and is, it has bound our citizenry together, and therein lie Trump’s troubles.

As he has pushed the envelope of governance up against and beyond what many have thought to be unpassable red lines, the constitutional bedrocks of our free press and judiciary, combined with citizen protest (of which he has attacked all three for interfering), have blocked him from going full on Orban, or worse, Putin. Even with 35% of the electorate’s backing, the constitutional pillars of press and the courts, wisely enshrined as they were by our nation’s founders, have done the necessary heavy lifting in defense of the US falling into a strongman regime.

And going forward, let’s hope they continue to be the reason for Trump’s troubles.