In one of her effective efforts to goad Donald Trump during their debate on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris told the viewing audience he didn\u2019t engender the level of international respect he often claims.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States,\u201d Harris said. \u201cAnd world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
She went on to say that military leaders viewed Trump as a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and to criticize Trump\u2019s efforts to block Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 victory. But, given an opportunity by the moderator to respond, Trump went back to that assertion about the world leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me just tell you about world leaders,\u201d he began. \u201cViktor Orb\u00e1n, one of the most respected men \u2014 they call him a \u2018strongman.\u2019 He\u2019s a tough person. Smart. Prime Minister of Hungary. They said why is the whole world blowing up? Three years ago it wasn\u2019t. Why is it blowing up? He said because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you listen to Trump with any regularity, you\u2019ve likely heard some version of this before. Trump brings it up a lot, this claim from Orb\u00e1n \u2014 who is not normally considered one of the \u201cmost respected men\u2019 \u2014 that Trump\u2019s strength kept the global peace. It plays to Trump\u2019s vanity, for one thing, and Orb\u00e1n is one of the few global leaders willing to overtly take Trump\u2019s side politically.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in part because Orb\u00e1n likely recognizes Trump as a disruptive agent in the Western world order. It\u2019s probably in part, too, because Trump, echoing others in the American right, reciprocates that support. But it is also clearly because Trump approves of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s autocratic tendencies.<\/p>\n
What isn\u2019t clear is whether Trump realizes that\u2019s what\u2019s meant when Orb\u00e1n is described as a \u2018strongman.\u2019 It seems that he often, if not always, thinks that the term being applied is \u2018strong man,\u2019 with the emphasis on the second word, not the first. This would certainly explain why he keeps using the pejorative to describe someone he clearly likes.<\/p>\n
When he spoke in The Bronx in May, Trump trotted out the story about Orb\u00e1n and his compliment.<\/p>\n
\u201cViktor Orb\u00e1n, did you ever hear of him? Prime Minister of Hungary, very tough guy,\u201d Trump said. \u201cKnown as a strongman. Oh, they hate it when I talk about him, because they say, \u2018He\u2019s a strongman; Trump loves strongmen.\u2019 I don\u2019t know, I like weak men, actually, I like weak men. I\u2019d much rather have a weak man than a strong man. But he is a strong man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Weak man\u2019 is the opposite of \u2018strong man,\u2019 not \u2018strongman.\u2019 And Trump\u2019s phrasing suggested that he thought the criticism of Orb\u00e1n was that he was somehow too strong, not that he was hostile to liberal democracy.<\/p>\n
Speaking to right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt last month, Trump referred to Orb\u00e1n as a \u2018very strong guy, and a good person,\u2019 reinforcing the idea that he just sees \u2018strong\u2019 as a compliment. Which would make sense, given that Trump himself has long used \u2018strong\u2019 as a compliment for people he likes.<\/p>\n
Back in 2008, for example, he was on Fox News and praised that year\u2019s Republican presidential nominee: Sen. John S. McCain, who Trump would later (infamously) disparage for having been a prisoner of war.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019ve known Senator McCain for a long time,\u2019 Trump said. \u2018He\u2019s a great guy, a great man. He\u2019s just a very strong guy, a very strong leader, and he\u2019s very, very smart.\u2019<\/p>\n
In 2003, he used the same term to describe Arnold Schwarzenegger, then seeking election as governor of California. (Schwarzenegger, too, would later be disparaged by Trump.)<\/p>\n
\u2018He\u2019s a really honorable guy,\u2019 Trump said, \u2018and, you know, what he says he\u2019s going to do, and he\u2019s also a strong man who\u2019s made really some incredibly good business decisions.\u2019<\/p>\n
Strong man, two words. Certainly true in the case of the former bodybuilder.<\/p>\n
As this year\u2019s presidential campaign has heated up, Trump has repeatedly spoken about Orb\u00e1n\u2019s comments and often mentioned the strength of the man they came from.<\/p>\n
\u2018Viktor Orb\u00e1n, prime minister of Hungary, is a very tough guy,\u2019 he said on Fox in early June. \u2018He\u2019s known as a strong man.\u2019 Emphasis on \u2018man.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Viktor Orb\u00e1n said just recently \u2014 he\u2019s a strong man from a very interesting country,\u2019 he told Dr. Phil McGraw a few days later. \u2018And he knows Russia very well.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The prime minister of Hungary, a very tough man, strong man, very \u2014 you know, somebody that I always got along with,\u2019 he said at a North Carolina rally in August. \u2018I get along with the strong ones. I don\u2019t get along with the weak ones.\u2019<\/p>\n
That much is true. Speaking at Turning Point Action event in Arizona in June, Trump referred to another foreign ally, Chinese President Xi Jinping, as a \u2018strong guy,\u2019 though \u2018strongman\u2019 would certainly also apply. (He also described his ally Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) as \u2018tough\u2019 and \u2018strong\u2019 in those same remarks.) But more often than not, the \u2018strong man\u2019 Trump is praising is Viktor Orb\u00e1n.<\/p>\n
Since Orb\u00e1n took power in Hungary, the nation has seen its democratic institutions weakened and Orb\u00e1n\u2019s power grow. Two years ago, the European parliament determined that Hungary no longer met the standard to be considered a full democracy but was, instead, a \u2018electoral autocracy.\u2019 An autocracy run by an autocrat. A strongman.<\/p>\n
Trump, though, hears this as \u2018strong man,\u2019 a term of praise for someone willing to be tough. He doesn\u2019t seem to understand that it is, instead, a pejorative term for a leader who holds and wields power without democratic constraint.<\/p>\n
But, then, Trump might consider that a term of praise, too.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In one of her effective efforts to goad Donald Trump during their debate on Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris told the viewing audience he didn\u2019t engender the level of international respect he often claims. \u201cI\u2019m going to tell you that I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States,\u201d Harris said. \u201cAnd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}