Debate explains why Trump disrespects our leaders

Trudy Rubin, Tribune News Service

There was one moment in last week's presidential debate that crystallised why former President Donald Trump must never again direct US foreign policy: his reaction to Vice President Kamala Harris' dig that "world leaders are laughing" at him. "Let me just tell you about world leaders," Trump instantly shot back. "Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men — they call him a strongman. He said (the world is blowing up) because you need Trump back as president."

Why on Earth did Trump cite the authoritarian prime minister of tiny Hungary for a character reference, and not the leader of a democratic ally in Europe or Asia? For starters, because Trump disrespects our democratic allies. The European leader he most admires is Orbán, the bad boy of the European Union who has muzzled Hungary's courts and press and turned the country into a virtual one-party state. Orbán is an autocrat who trades in antisemitism and ugly anti-immigration tropes and is the most pro-Vladimir Putin and anti-Ukraine leader in Europe. He is Moscow's mole in trying to divide and paralyse the European Union.

But even more dangerous, Orbán, like Putin, knows just how susceptible the MAGA narcissist is to flattery. "Viktor Orbán said ... the most respected, most feared person is Donald Trump," the former president bragged during the debate. I would modify Harris' dig. Democratic allies aren't laughing at the possibility that a man so blinded by ego might once again become president of the world's most powerful country. They are terrified. But dictators and autocrats are gleeful because Trump has no clue about how easily he is being played.

During the debate, Trump incoherently repeated his core foreign policy tenet: that he alone can solve international policy crises by dealing directly with tough guys. Yet, contrary to his claims, he failed over and over in his interactions with dictators in his first term, laying the ground for the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and the expanded nuclear threat from North Korea and Iran. And now he wants to try the same failed approach again. Let's start with Ukraine.

Trump insisted that if he were president, the war in Ukraine "would have never started." He claimed that "Russia would have never, ever — I know Putin very well — he would have never — and there was no threat of it, either, by the way, for four years ... "I'll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended. If I'm president-elect, I'll get it done before even becoming president." Trump conveniently ignores that Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, seizing Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine. That war in Ukraine's east was going on all during Trump's tenure. If Putin didn't invade further while Trump was in office, it was because he thought Trump would let Russia dominate Ukraine without a war. After all, the former president opposed giving weapons to Kyiv and talked of quitting NATO — leaving Ukraine totally exposed.

Moreover, Trump publicly conceded Crimea to Putin in 2018, saying it belonged to Russia because everyone who lives there speaks Russian. Trump's level of ignorance about Ukraine, fed by Putin's disinformation, is beyond shocking. Before 2022, roughly two-thirds of Ukraine spoke Russian as well as Ukrainian, a hangover from Soviet days, but most of those Russian speakers oppose Moscow's domination.

Putin expected that, under Trump, Ukraine would be forced to submit to Russian political overlordship. Why go to war if the US president will hand you victory for free? Now Trump, who refused on Tuesday to say he wants Ukraine to "win," insists he can solve the war in 24 hours — by forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sit with Putin and "negotiate." Does anyone doubt this means Trump would back Putin's demand for Kyiv to capitulate or suffer a complete US aid cutoff — sending the world a message that the United States no longer stands up for democracies that are threatened by Moscow or Beijing?

Commentators on Russian state-controlled TV, which lavishly praises Trump with terms like "charismatic" and "our Donald," tell their viewers that he will deliver Kyiv to Russia. But they also make fun of Trump for claiming to take seriously Putin's tongue-in-cheek endorsement of Harris, meant to troll naive MAGA backers. Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia's RT propaganda network, tut-tutted, "Oh, sweetie!" to Trump about his purported dismay. (Discussing the debate, top Russian TV commentators were shocked when Harris, whom they regularly denounce with MAGA-style insults, trounced Trump.)

However, Trump's relationship with Putin is not his only failed bromance with a dictator. He exchanged "love letters" with Kim Jong Un, but failed to get the North Korean dictator to halt his nuclear programme or stop building up his arsenal of nuclear warheads and missiles. He pulled out of former President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran but was never able to engage the ayatollahs. Freed from the very real restraints of that deal, they could now produce one nuclear weapon, should they choose to do so, in one to two weeks.

And — although he deserves credit for taking a stronger trade stance toward China — Trump's brief romance with Xi Jinping came to naught. As for Afghanistan, it was Trump who made an awful deal with the Taliban that freed 5,000 of its hardened fighters from jail and set it on its way to retake the country.

I harshly criticised the botched Biden pullout from Kabul, leaving behind matériel and thousands of Afghans who worked for US officials. But what Trump failed to mention on the debate stage in Philly was that he demanded that the army pull out from Afghanistan during the last six weeks of his presidency. This time frame would have produced a worse disaster than the withdrawal under President Joe Biden. Trump's erratic command was only countered when US military leaders told him it could not physically be done.

The message of this debate was that an aging Trump is more deluded than ever about his personal prowess and his magical ability to persuade dictators to do his bidding — even though they clearly have his number. With his disconnect from reality and disdain for democracy, Trump is terrifyingly unfit to shape the foreign policy of the United States.