In 1630, John Winthrop told his fellow Massachusetts settlers: “We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” Though Winthrop was addressing his own community, Americans have taken the underlying sentiment to apply to the country as a whole. The drafters of the Declaration knew that they had a global audience, so they wrote that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” They also started the bill of particulars against King George by pronouncing, “let Facts be submitted to a candid world.” As Lincoln later said at Gettysburg, the Declaration dedicated the nation to the proposition that all men are created equal. In human history, it was unprecedented to dedicate a nation to ideas instead of blood and soil. The ideas that set us apart were liberty and democracy, as well as equality. Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense: “Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”
It almost came apart during the Civil War. In 1861, historian Allen Guelzo points out, the United States was the only example of a large-scale democracy in the world. Monarchs and autocrats had crushed other struggles for rule by the people. “If the American democracy shattered itself because seven states weren’t willing to abide by the outcome of the presidential election, then every one of those kings, emperors and dictators would be able to say to their nations, ‘See what democracy gets you? Instability. Disorder.’”[1] A victory for Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee would have been a triumph for tyrants everywhere. Lincoln understood the stakes: “We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”[2]
In the 20th century, Americans leaders wanted our ideas to extend around the globe. On the 175th anniversary of the Declaration, Harry Truman said; “[T]he ideas on which our Government is founded—the ideas of equality, of God-given rights, of self-government-are still revolutionary. Since 1776 they have spread around the world.” He emphasized the importance of being a model for other countries: “Today, more than ever before, it is important that we continue to make progress in expanding our freedoms and improving the opportunities of our citizens. To do so is to strengthen the hopes and determination of free men everywhere.”[3] In his 1961 inaugural, John F. Kennedy also referred back to the Declaration: “And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.” JFK saw a special responsibility for the United States: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”[4]
American behavior has often clashed with American ideals. At times, selfish and base motives have driven foreign and military policy. Lincoln denounced the Mexican American War as “unnecessary and unconstitutional,” and a century later, Harry Truman laid a wreath at a memorial to Mexican heroes of that war. At other times, good intentions have mingled with poor judgment and skewed intelligence to produce catastrophic results. Vietnam comes to mind. And even when leaders have combined noble motives with practical wisdom, they have had to deal with the world as it is, meaning that the United States has always done business with undemocratic regimes.
Yet for all of our faults, mistakes, sins, and compromises, Americans continue to believe that our country has a special place and mission in the world. At its best, this belief inspires efforts to make the United States worthy of its exceptional self-image. In examples ranging from the Marshall Plan to the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, the United States has led with an open hand instead of an iron fist. These efforts serve our self-interest, properly understood. The United States is safer and more prosperous when other countries like its people and admire its virtues.
Though they have not always used the term, American political leaders have generally embraced American exceptionalism. After coming under criticism for suggesting ambivalence about the concept, President Obama took care to proclaim it. “What makes us special—a lot of times we talk about American exceptionalism,” he said in 2013, “what makes us the envy of the world has not just been our ability to generate incredible wealth for a few people, it’s the fact that we’ve given everybody a chance to pursue their own true measure of happiness. That’s who we are.”[5] The following year, he told West Point graduates: “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being. But what makes us exceptional is not our ability to flout international norms and the rule of law, it is our willingness to affirm them through our actions.”[6]
It is rare for major public figures to deny or disparage American exceptionalism. That is why Trump’s comments on the subject are worth a very close look.
In 2013, Vladimir Putin derided President Obama’s endorsement of American exceptionalism. In an op-ed for the New York Times, he wrote: “It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation.”[7] American political figures reacted with indignation, and even Obama’s fiercest GOP congressional critics said that they found Putin’s comments to be insulting.[8] Putin did get applause from one American celebrity: Donald Trump. On Greta Van Susteren’s Fox News show the next day, Trump discussed Putin and the op-ed:
And it really makes him look like a great leader, frankly. And when he criticizes the president for using the term “American exceptionalism,” if you’re in Russia, you don’t want to hear that America is exceptional. . . . And that’s basically what Putin was saying is that, you know, you use a term like “American exceptionalism,” and frankly, the way our country is being treated right now by Russia and Syria and lots of other places and with all the mistakes we’ve made over the years, like Iraq and so many others, it’s sort of a hard term to use. But other nations and other countries don’t want to hear about American exceptionalism. They’re insulted by it. And that’s what Putin was saying.[9]
On other cable news programs, Trump gleefully claimed that Putin had scored points on President Obama. He told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo that Putin “is really embarrassing the United States, and he’s embarrassing the president. . . . He’s making him look like he’s the professor and the president is a schoolchild. . . . It makes the president look very weak and very ineffective. Frankly, it makes it look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”[10] On CNN, he said to Piers Morgan: “We have a president who’s been outplayed by Putin to an extent that nobody has ever seen and we look very bad as a country and certainly he’s looking very bad.”[11]
Trump’s comments triggered little commentary at the time.. Still, it was extraordinary that he was praising Putin, belittling President Obama, and saying that American exceptionalism was offensive to countries such as Russia. By this point, it was clear that the Putin regime was an adversary. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney had said that Russia “is without question our number one geopolitical foe, they fight for every cause for the world’s worst actors.”[12] Though some Democrats criticized Romney’s comment, they eventually acknowledged its accuracy.
It was bad enough that Trump sided with a foreign adversary against the president of his own country. Even worse, stayed with that side. Three years later, at a tea party event in Texas, the moderator asked him what he apparently thought was a softball question about American exceptionalism. Trump let loose with a diatribe against the whole concept. “I don’t like the term. I’ll be honest with you. People say, ‘Oh he’s not patriotic.’ Look, if I’m a Russian, or I’m a German, or I’m a person we do business with, why, you know, I don’t think it’s a very nice term.”[13]
Trump then revealed what he thought exceptionalism means. “First of all, Germany is eating our lunch. So they say, ‘Why are you exceptional? We’re doing a lot better than you.’” Trump was defining national status in purely material terms: in his mind, being “exceptional” meant nothing more than being richer than other countries. He was thus breaking with a centuries-old American tradition that emphasized our commitment to the principles of the Declaration. In the example that he mentioned, he was also garbling the facts. The United States had a higher gross domestic product per capita than Germany. It did run a trade deficit with Germany, but it made no sense for him to suggest that German trade policy caused it. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel had to explain to him in 2017, Germany does not have a trade policy separate from the European Union.
Trump went on: “I want to take everything back from the world that we’ve given them. We’ve given them so much.” He was playing to the common misperception that a huge share of the federal budget goes to foreign aid. (The real figure is around 1 percent.) Living up to the nation’s ideals of generosity and service, Americans have given massive amounts of private aid through organizations such as CARE and the Salvation Army. If he really wanted to take back everything that American has given to the world, he would insist that all of these organizations send debt collectors around the globe, demanding the return of charitable contributions. (Perhaps he knows some Mafiosi who could help.) Seriously, shutting down American generosity to the world’s needy would ruin our ideals and tarnish our international image.
He continued: “When I see these politicians get up [and say], ‘the American exceptionalism’—we’re dying. We owe 18 trillion in debt. I’d like to make us exceptional. And I’d like to talk later instead of now. Does that make any sense?” No. It takes effort to make sense out of this jumble of words. One could try to reconstruct this passage into something coherent by focusing on the impact of our mounting federal debt. Trump probably would not want to make this argument today, however. The figure that he cited in 2015 was gross federal debt, and by that yardstick, he is a miserable failure. By 2019, it was more than $22 trillion, and the projected figure for 2029 is $34 trillion.[14]
At other times, Trump has suggested that America is not a very good nation, let alone an exceptional one. During the 2016 campaign, David Sanger of the New York Times asked if he would press the Turkish government about its violations of civil liberties. Trump replied:
I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country. We have tremendous problems when you have policemen being shot in the streets, when you have riots. . . . When you have all of the things that are happening in this country—we have other problems, and I think we have to focus on those problems. When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.[15]
Take a second look at this phrase: “how bad the United States is.” Trump was talking about violent crime, which pervaded the hellish New York landscape of the 1970s and 1980s. As the previous chapter noted, however, crime rates had been plunging since the 1990s, and by the time he ran for president New York was safer in many ways than London.[16] Notably, Trump paid no attention to the focus of the reporter’s question, which was civil liberties. In its 2016 international survey, Freedom House scored the United States very high in the protection of civil liberties. As we also saw in the last chapter, Trump did not consider this accomplishment to be a good thing, as he had long complained about the rights of criminal defendants.[17]
A much more disquieting problem with Trump’s comment was the implied moral equivalence between the United States and autocratic regimes. This country is far from perfect, and for an example of gross injustice, remember the Central Park Five. Trump was not just acknowledging our faults. He was suggesting that a country with a flawed but deeply rooted commitment to human rights is equivalent to one that wantonly puts political dissidents behind bars. The former, he concluded, has no right to judge the latter. Trump is ignorant of history, so he probably did not know that he was parroting an argument that the Soviet Union used to make. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as President Reagan’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote that the Soviet technique was to hold Western democracies to abstract, absolute standards and always find them wanting. “The Soviets can always claim ‘We are no worse than you. Even if we are a lawless society, you too are a lawless society, we are no worse than you.’ This is the ‘logic’ of the doctrine of moral equivalence.”[18]
Fittingly, Trump applied the same moral equivalence to a veteran of the KGB. When he said in an interview that he wanted to get along with Vladimir Putin, Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly cautioned him that Putin is a killer. Trump did not care: “There are a lot of killers. Do you think our country is so innocent? Do you think our country is so innocent?”[19]
Trump is weak—morally weak, intellectually weak, and physically weak. He compensates by adoring toughness, or at least its outward appearance. In the 2016 campaign, he retweeted a quotation that expressed this affinity: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”[20] When reporters told him that the line came from Mussolini, he said that he did not care. Trump’s toughness tropism helps explain why he is such a Putin fanboy. Over the past two decades, Putin’s government has killed and jailed political opponents, strangled freedom of the press, taken foreign territory by force, and given aid to other autocratic regimes. What the American tradition would revile as cruel despotism, Trump sees as “strength.” Putin tops it off with flamboyant displays of bare-chested masculinity, which Trump venerates.
Trump has had his eye on Putin for a long time. In 2013, he staged the Miss Universe Pageant in Russia and tweeted this odd message: “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow—if so, will he become my new best friend?”[21] There is no evidence that Putin attended the event, but Trump’s admiration was undiminished. The next year, he told Jeffrey Lord: “I had the Miss Universe contest in Moscow recently, six months ago, and Putin, by the way, treated us unbelievably well. And it was at that time that Putin said, ‘Who do they think they are saying they’re exceptional?’ And I understand that.”[22] In another 2014 interview, he endorsed sanctions for the Russian invasion of Crimea, but continued to compare Putin favorably to President Obama: “I mean, Putin has eaten Obama’s lunch, therefore our lunch, for a long period of time. I just hope that Obama, who’s not looking too good, doesn’t do something very foolish and very stupid to show his manhood.”[23]
In December 2015, Putin made a point of saying that Trump was “bright and talented.” Trump answered in kind: “It is always a great honor to be so nicely complimented by a man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”[24] At the time, Trump was on speaking terms with Joe Scarborough and phoned into his MSNBC program. “When people call you ‘brilliant’ it’s always good,” Trump said, “especially when the person heads up Russia.” Scarborough pointed out that Putin “is a person who kills journalists, political opponents and invades countries, obviously that would be a concern, would it not?” Trump was nonchalant: “He’s running his country, and at least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country.” When Scarborough repeated that Putin kills journalists, Trump answered with moral equivalence: “Well, I think that our country does plenty of killing, too, Joe.” Trump later gave a ritual condemnation of murdering journalists, but added: “I’ve always felt fine about Putin. He’s a strong leader. He’s a powerful leader.”[25]
As questions about Russia mounted in 2016, Trump contradicted his previous claims to a relationship with Putin, denying that he knew the man. He also said he had no dealings with Russia although Michael Cohen was pursuing a deal to build Trump Tower Moscow. All the same, he stuck to his praise for Putin. When Matt Lauer asked him about his previous warm words for the Russian leader, he said, “Well, he does have an 82 percent approval rating.”[26] The answer was consistent with his belief that might—or in this case, popularity—makes right. He failed to consider, though, that the number might have overstated Putin’s popularity, since it is hard to get honest survey answers in a country where political critics end up dead. In response to a question about Russian hacking, Trump mixed dishonesty with a fresh helping of moral equivalence: “Well, nobody knows that for a fact. But do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does?” Trump finished with another paean to Russian “strength” and another slap at the American president: “I mean, the man has very strong control over a country. And that’s a very different system and I don’t happen to like the system. But certainly in that system he’s been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.”[27]
Among Putin’s most significant acts was the 2014 annexation of Crimea. President Obama and other world leaders condemned it as an act of raw aggression. In a 2016 interview, Trump took a more tolerant view, claiming that “the people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were. And you have to look at that, also. Now, that was under—just so you understand, that was done under Obama’s administration. . . . Crimea has been taken. Don’t blame Donald Trump for that.”[28] A couple of years later, when a reporter asked if he accepted Russia’s annexation of Crimea, he said: “We’re going to have to see.”[29] He reportedly told G7 leaders that Crimea is Russian because its people speak Russian.[30]
The first-ever acknowledged meeting between Trump and Putin took place at a 2017 international summit in Germany. Trump reportedly took his interpreter’s notes and ordered her not to tell anyone what they had said.[31] At a dinner on the same day, he and Putin had a private chat with no other Americans present. Their third meeting took place in November of that year at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Meeting in Da Nang, Vietnam. Aboard Air Force One, after the event, a reporter asked Trump if he had pressed Putin about Russian interference with the 2016 election. “He just—every time he sees me, he says, ‘I didn’t do that,’” Trump answered. “And I believe—I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says, ‘I didn’t do that.’ I think he’s very insulted by it, if you want to know the truth.”[32]
After a fraudulent Russian election in March 2018, Trump called Putin to congratulate him on his “victory,” although aides had prepared a briefing book that said in all-capital letters: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.”[33] John McCain observed on Twitter: “An American president does not lead the Free World by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections. And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election.”[34]
In July 2018, Trump had his notorious Helsinki press conference with Putin. He struck the moral equivalence chord once again, and linked tensions in bilateral relations to the Mueller probe: “I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolis. . . . I do feel that we have both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I think it’s kept us apart. It’s kept us separated.” On the issue of election interference, he again gave the benefit of the doubt to Putin. “My people came to me, Dan Coats, came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” He latter implausibly claimed that he meant to say “wouldn’t be,” but his other comments in Helsinki showed that his faith lay with the Russian autocrat. “I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators.”[35] That reaction was like welcoming Al Capone’s help in investigating the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. In one way, though, Trump was right: incredible means “unworthy of belief.”
Putin gloated. When a reporter asked if he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, he said: “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” Trump’s craven performance appalled most Americans who saw it. Representative Will Hurd (R-TX), a former CIA agent, said: “I’ve seen Russian intelligence manipulate many people over my professional career and I never would have thought that the US President would become one of the ones getting played by old KGB hands.”[36]
Perhaps Trump’s most despicable comment on Russia came as an informal aside. At a 2019 White House press availability, a reporter asked about policy toward Afghanistan. Trump rambled for a while, then referred to the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion. “The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there.”[37] Putin might have approved of that historical revisionism, but no respectable American commentators did. “Right to be there? We cannot recall a more absurd misstatement of history by an American President,” wrote the Wall Street Journal editorial board. “The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan with three divisions in December 1979 to prop up a fellow communist government.”[38] The United States spent billions to help the Afghan resistance, and Reagan cited the Soviet defeat as one of his key accomplishments. There is no other way to put it: Trump was retrospectively taking sides against his own country.
The Russians knew what they were getting. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, an employee of their social media operation described reactions to Trump’s election: “On November 9, 2016, a sleepless night was ahead of us. And when around 8 a.m. the most important result of our work arrived, we uncorked a tiny bottle of champagne . . . took one gulp each and looked into each other's eyes. . . . We uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great.’”[39] On the same night, the Mueller report reveals, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund received a mysterious text message: “Putin has won.”[40]
Many writers have suggested that Putin must have compromising information—kompromat—about Trump’s personal life or, more likely, his finances. Future revelations may well bear out this speculation, but there is another reason for Trump’s deference to Putin. Not only in Russia but all over the world, Trump finds much to like in leaders who mock the democratic principles that Americans hold dear. He has a weakness for strongmen.
This aspect of his character is nothing new. In 1989, peaceful protesters, mostly students, occupied Tiananmen Square in Beijing. They built a version of the Statue of Liberty and read a translation of the Declaration of Independence. Chinese troops put down the demonstration by force, and to this day, no one knows how many protesters died. Most Americans saw Tiananmen Square as a case study in the evils of dictatorship. Donald Trump saw it as an illustration of “strength.” In a 1990 Playboy interview, he said: “When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak . . . as being spit on by the rest of the world.”[41] Almost blew it? Did he think it would have been bad for the Chinese to permit free speech? And why did he follow that statement with a reference to the United States? Did he regard China as a role model? A little later in the interview, he hinted that the 41st president should be more like the Chinese leaders: “I like George Bush very much and support him and always will. But I disagree with him when he talks of a kinder, gentler America. I think if this country gets any kinder or gentler, it’s literally going to cease to exist.”
Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush both waged war against Iraq. The 2003 invasion was extremely controversial, but few Americans have had anything good to say about Saddam Hussein, universally acknowledged as a mass murderer. Trump, who falsely claimed to have opposed the invasion from the start, is an exception. During a 2016 campaign speech, he said of Saddam: “He was a bad guy—really bad guy. But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists.”[42] Trump was gratuitously taking a swipe at the due process of law while presenting an upside-down picture of Saddam, who was a state sponsor of terrorism. Another speech was even worse: “Then Saddam Hussein throws a little gas. Everyone goes crazy. Oh, it’s because of gas.”[43] A little gas? In the late 1980s, Saddam launched attacks against dozens of Kurdish villages, using them to test chemical weapons. In the worst attack, in the city of Halabja, mustard gas and nerve agents killed at least 3,000 people.
Like Saddam, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is a sadistic dictator. A United Nations report listed some of his crimes: “extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”[44] And as with Saddam, Trump’s view of Kim was initially of the “horrible but admirably strong” variety. “If you look at North Korea, this guy, I mean, he’s like a maniac, OK? And you’ve got to give him credit. How many young guys—he was like 26 or 25 when his father died—take over these tough generals. . . . It’s incredible. He wiped out the uncle. He wiped out this one, that one. I mean, this guy doesn’t play games.”[45] Give him credit?
Early in his presidency, Trump went through his “fire and fury” phase, disparaging Kim as “Little Rocket Man” and tweeting a weirdly phallic warning: “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the ‘Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.’ Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”[46] Belligerence abruptly gave way to a summit, where Kim made a favorable impression. Trump soon reverted to his previous attitude, praising Kim with words that echoed his earlier comments about Putin. When Bret Baier of Fox News asked about Kim’s record of murdering people, Trump said: “Hey, when you take over a country, tough country, with tough people, and you take it over from your father, I don’t care who you are, what you are, how much of an advantage you have. If you can do that at 27 years old, I mean that’s one in 10,000 that could do that. . . . I think we understand each other.” Baier interjected that Kim had done bad things. “Yeah, but so have a lot of other people done some really bad things,” Trump replied. “I mean, I could go through a lot of nations where a lot of bad things were done.”[47] The next day, Trump spoke to Steve Doocy, also of Fox News. “He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head,” Trump said. “Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”[48] Trump later claimed that he was kidding about the last part, though the video does not suggest a jocular demeanor.
At a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, Trump said: “And then we fell in love, OK? No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters. And they’re great letters. We fell in love.” He anticipated criticism of his remarks by falling back on his theme of popularity-makes-right. “Now, they’ll make—they’ll say, ‘Donald Trump said they fell in love. How horrible. How horrible is that? So unpresidential.’ [laughter] And I always tell you, it’s so easy to be presidential. But instead of having 10,000 people outside trying to get into this packed arena, we’d have about 200 people standing right there. OK? [applause]”[49]
Trump seemed willing to overlook or excuse Kim’s abuses of human rights, even when they involved Americans. In 2019, he commented on the death of college student Otto Warmbier, who underwent torture in North Korea and then died in 2017 after the regime sent him back to the United States in a coma. “I don’t believe he [Kim] would have allowed that to happen. It just wasn’t to his advantage to allow that to happen. Those prisons are rough, they’re rough places and bad things happened. But I really don’t believe that he was—I don’t believe he knew about it. . . . He tells me that he didn’t know about it, and I will take him at his word.”[50]
A few months after those comments, he talked about a news report that Kim’s half-brother had been a CIA informant before his assassination, which Kim had almost certainly ordered. “I see that, and I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un,” Trump said. “I think the relationship is very well, but I appreciated the letter. I saw the information about the CIA with regard to his brother or half-brother, and I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices. I wouldn’t let that happen under my auspices. I just received a beautiful letter from Kim Jong Un.”[51] With this casual statement, he stood with Kim against the US intelligence community, which would now have a tougher time recruiting intelligence assets in North Korea.
The world is full of other autocrats that Trump is ready to befriend.
After taking power in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines instigated the extrajudicial killing of thousands of people in his country. Though ostensibly part of a “war on drugs,” the slaughter took out political opponents as well as suspected drug dealers.[52] In a call with Duterte, Trump said: “I just wanted to congratulate you because I am hearing of the unbelievable job (you’re doing) on the drug problem.” Duterte claimed that he had to act harshly for the sake of his nation. Trump answered with a dig at President Obama: “I . . . fully understand that and I think we had a previous president who did not understand that.” He concluded by inviting the dictator to the White House and telling him, “You are a good man.”[53]
Duterte had long justified the killing of journalists, at least when there was a pretext of corruption: “Just because you’re a journalist you are not exempted from assassination, if you’re a son of a bitch.”[54] The killings continued during his tenure. At a meeting with Trump in Manila, Duterte answered reporters’ questions: “We will be talking on matters of interest to both the Philippines and—with you around, guys, you’re the spies. Yes, you are.”[55] Trump smirked at the comment.
Trump excuses the rule of strongmen by referring to the difficulties that they confront. He used similar language about two autocrats who visited the United States. He said of Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sisi: “I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President al-Sisi. He’s done a fantastic job in a very difficult situation.”[56] Awaiting the Egyptian leader at an international summit, he called out, “Where’s my favorite dictator?”[57] In New York, he met with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “And it’s a great honor and privilege—because he’s become a friend of mine—to introduce President Erdogan of Turkey. He’s running a very difficult part of the world. He’s involved very, very strongly, and frankly, he’s getting very high marks.”[58] In 2019, Trump gave a green light for Erdogan’s incursion into northern Syria to drive out the Kurds. After Erdogan had carried out the operation and agreed to suspend further action, Trump said: “So you have a 22-mile strip. And for many, many years, Turkey—in all fairness, they’ve had a legitimate problem with it. They had terrorists. They had a lot of people in there that they couldn’t have. They’ve suffered a lot of loss of lives also. And they had to have it cleaned out.”[59] If the positive allusion to ethnic cleansing were not enough, Trump then tweeted: “Just spoke to President @RTErdogan of Turkey. He told me there was minor sniper and mortar fire that was quickly eliminated. He very much wants the ceasefire, or pause, to work. Likewise, the Kurds want it, and the ultimate solution, to happen.”[60] It is not clear whether Trump understood the history of the phrase “ultimate solution.”
Trump has a soft spot for Saudi Arabia, the first foreign country that he visited as president. Saudi Arabia has always committed abuses of human rights, which got much worse during the first two years of the Trump administration. In October 2018, Saudi agents murdered Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul. He was a Washington Post columnist and outspoken critic of the Saudi regime. Although the killing of a US resident was a blatant effort to silence opposition, Trump shied from meaningful action. Trump called Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman “a strong person, he has very good control.”[61] Even after the CIA concluded that the prince had ordered the murder, Trump put dollar signs ahead of principles:
After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels—so important for the world. As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First![62]
In a Reuters interview, he continued to oppose economic sanctions: “I really hope that people aren’t going to suggest that we should not take hundreds of billions of dollars that they’re going to siphon off to Russia and to China, primarily those two, instead of giving it to us.”[63] Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized Trump’s decision. “It's un-American,” he said. “When we provide aid to other countries, we do so because we want to see good things happen in those countries. We espouse American values around the world. And to say, ‘Well, no. They're going to buy some arms for us and so it's OK to kill a journalist,’ sends exactly the wrong message about who we are as a country.”[64] It fell to a French leader to school the American president in American ideals. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” said French President Emmanuel Macron at a Paris event marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. “By pursuing our own interests first, with no regard to others,’ we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values.”[65]
At a 2015 campaign rally in Mobile, Alabama, Trump shamelessly admitted: “Saudi Arabia, I get along great with all of them, they buy apartments from me, they spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them?”[66] His ties to the Saudis went back decades. In 1991, when he was deep in debt, he sold his yacht to a Saudi prince for $20 million. A few years later, the prince bought a stake in Trump’s Plaza Hotel. In 2001, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia paid $4.5 million for the 45th floor of his Trump World Tower.[67] The business dealings continued after his election. Lobbyists for the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at his expensive Washington hotel, buying 500 nights over a span of three months.[68] Trump hotels in New York and Chicago also saw an inflow of Saudi visitors.[69]
It is not just Saudi Arabia. A review by NBC news found that representatives of at least 22 foreign governments appear to have spent money at Trump Organization hotels, restaurants, golf clubs, and other properties.[70] For instance, public records indicate that at least nine governments bought or rented property in Trump buildings or communities: Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, China, Malaysia, Slovakia, Thailand, India, and the European Union.
There are connections to foreign governments even when they are not directly spending the money. The homepage of a Trump-branded property in the Philippines says: “Rising in the Philippines' most prestigious financial and commercial district is a name synonymous with unparalleled service, quality and real estate. Trump Tower at Century City—the country's most amenitized residential high-rise and Manila’s definitive landmark.”[71] The licensing deal for the hotel made millions for Trump. Right after the 2016 election, Duterte announced that he was appointing Trump’s Filipino business partner as special envoy to the United States for trade, investment, and economic affairs. The partner then flew to New York for a private meeting at Trump Tower with Trump’s children.[72]
The Trump Organization website includes this description of a property in Turkey: “Trump Towers, Istanbul, Sisli is a landmark in the historic city of Istanbul. With two towers rising in Mecidiyekoy, one of the city's most vibrant areas, the property captures the utmost in luxury.”[73] When it opened in 2012, Ivanka Trump tweeted: “Thank you Prime Minister Erdogan for joining us yesterday to celebrate the launch of #TrumpTowers Istanbul!”[74] Erdogan was president five years later, when he arranged a dubious referendum that strengthened his autocratic power. After Trump congratulated him, Mother Jones reminded readers that Trump had once done an interview with Steve Bannon where he admitted: “I have a little conflict of interest ’cause I have a major, major building in Istanbul. It’s a tremendously successful job. It’s called Trump Towers—two towers, instead of one, not the usual one, it’s two.”[75]
In some cases, Trump customers are influential foreign figures, former leaders, or aspiring office-holders. A Washington Post report found that patrons of the Trump International Hotel included exiled Thai prime ministers, a Nigerian presidential candidate, and the leader of an Iraqi order of Sufi Muslims who spent 26 nights at an extremely expensive suite.[76]
Many of Trump’s transactions potentially fall afoul of the Constitution. The Foreign Emoluments Clause (Article. I, section 9, clause 8) states: “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [the United States], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” In lawsuits, plaintiffs argued that Trump’s dealings with foreigners violated this clause.[77] The litigation will turn on complicated and technical points of constitutional interpretation. The relevant case law is limited precisely because previous presidents took pains to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest. Jimmy Carter, for instance, put his peanut business into a blind trust. Whatever the outcome in court, however, it is clear that Trump has violated the spirit of the law. The Framers included the Emoluments Clause because they worried that foreign benefits and payments would prejudice the judgment of public officials toward their benefactors. In the case of the president, wrote Hamilton, the idea was that he would “have no pecuniary inducement to renounce or desert the independence intended for him by the Constitution.”[78] Trump asked rhetorically about the Saudis: “Am I supposed to dislike them?” No, but neither is he supposed to favor them because they have put money in his pocket.
Such conflicts of interest damage the country’s reputation. When foreign leaders think that they can buy favor with the government by enriching the president and his family, they see America not as a city on a hill but as a bazaar in a swamp.
At the American battlefield memorial in Normandy, a visitor can see inscribed quotations about war. One is from General Mark Clark: “If ever proof were needed that we fought for a cause and not for conquest, it could be found in these cemeteries. Here was our only conquest: all we asked . . . was enough . . . soil in which to bury our gallant dead.” By the middle of the 20th century, Americans thought that their country should fight for liberty, not loot. After World War II, the United States agreed to the Fourth Geneva Convention, forbidding the hostile acquisition of resources from occupied territory.[79] Trump has a different view. As early as 2011, he tweeted: “I still can't believe we didn't take the oil from Iraq.”[80] Two years later, he said it again: “I still can’t believe we left Iraq without the oil.”[81] He repeated the claim throughout the 2016 campaign and did not stop when he became president. In his ill-famed remarks at the Central Intelligence Agency on the day after he took office, he said: “The old expression, ‘To the victor belong the spoils’—you remember. I always used to say, keep the oil. I wasn't a fan of Iraq. I didn't want to go into Iraq. But I will tell you, when we were in, we got out wrong. And I always said, in addition to that, keep the oil.”[82] Ominously, he offered a side remark to CIA Director Mike Pompeo: “Maybe you'll have another chance.” He kept at it throughout his administration, reportedly raising the prospect with the Iraqi prime minister.[83]
Treaties are the law of the land, and the chief executive has a constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. So Trump was cheerfully discussing a violation of the presidential oath as well as international law. He was also reinforcing a charge that America’s global critics had long made: that the United States is a pirate country that cares only for its own enrichment. Pravda could not have said it more effectively than Trump.
He has soiled our national image in other ways. Just as he praises murderous dictatorships, he insults democracies and their leaders. In the wake of a 2017 terror attack, London Mayor Sadiq Khan condemned the terrorists and told the people of his city that they should not be alarmed at the surge of police activity that would follow. Trump attacked him on Twitter: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’”[84] As he was heading to London in 2019, he tweeted: “ Kahn [sic] reminds me very much of our very dumb and incompetent Mayor of NYC, de Blasio, who has also done a terrible job—only half his height.”[85] At the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, he quoted an invisible friend to attack Muslim immigration to France: “I have a friend—he’s a very, very substantial guy. He loves the City of Lights. He loves Paris. For years, every year, during the summer, he would go to Paris—it was automatic—with his wife and his family. I hadn’t seen him in a while. And I said, Jim, let me ask you a question: How’s Paris doing? ‘Paris? I don’t go there anymore. Paris is no longer Paris.’”[86]
Sometimes his remarks about other countries end up revealing his lack of knowledge. In a fundraising speech, he bragged that he made up information in a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He insisted that the United States had a trade deficit with Canada without knowing whether we actually did. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in—‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed . . . . So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know. . . . I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’”[87] He claimed that he turned out to be right, which he was not: the United States had a trade surplus with Canada, just as Trudeau said. And when he was running for president, he said that immigration had made Brussels a “hellhole” but later tried to make nice: “Belgium is a beautiful city.”[88]
Presidents have tried to preserve the image of national unity by refraining from attacks on domestic political opponents while overseas. Not Trump. During a 2018 visit to American troops stationed in Iraq, he said: “You know, when you think about it, you’re fighting for borders in other countries, and they don’t want to fight—the Democrats—for the border of our country. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”[89] During a 2019 trip to Japan, he quoted Kim: “North Korea fired off some small weapons, which disturbed some of my people, and others, but not me. I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”[90] And he claimed that his invisible Japanese friends agreed with him about his political opponents: “Great fun and meeting with Prime Minister @AbeShinzo. Numerous Japanese officials told me that the Democrats would rather see the United States fail than see me or the Republican Party succeed—Death Wish!”[91] His most disgraceful insult came in Normandy on the 75th anniversary of D-Day—an event where he was duty bound to focus on the sacrifices of Americans in uniform instead of his own petty grudges. With the headstones of a military cemetery in the background, he told Laura Ingraham of Fox News that Robert Mueller—a recipient of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart—“just made such a fool out of himself.”[92]
One group of world leaders does consider Trump to be a role model of sorts: autocrats and would-be strongmen. In at least 15 countries, authoritarian rulers have used Trump’s “fake news” line to delegitimize political opponents.[93] One such leader is Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who called his country’s leading independent news portal “a fake news factory.”[94] After Trump welcomed Orban to the White House, he reportedly said, “It’s like we’re twins.”[95]
In other corners of the world, people do not associate Trump with anything good. For years, Gallup has been posing a question to adults all over the world: “Do you approve or disapprove of the job performance of the leadership of the United States?” In 2016, the last year of President Obama’s tenure, adults in more than 130 countries and areas gave American leadership a median approval rating of 48 percent. After Trump’s first year in office, that number had plunged to 30 percent, and a year later, it was virtually unchanged at 31 percent.[96]
This shift reflects the words and deeds that this chapter has recounted, but it also stems from those that previous chapters covered as well. The technology of the 21st century makes it easy for people all over the world to follow events in the United States, and they do not like what they see. His dishonesty is among his most recognizable traits around the globe. So is his record on human rights. The nation’s reputation for defending individual liberty, once quite strong, has dropped considerably in international surveys by the Pew Research Center.[97]
In another survey, this one of experts in foreign affairs, 93 percent say the United States is less respected by other countries today compared with the past.[98] One might dismiss this result as the opinion of left-leaning academics, but a survey of rank-and-file Americans shows a similar concern. According to Dina Smeltz and colleagues at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs: “As interactions with allies have strained over the past year, majorities of Americans say that relations with other countries are worsening (56%) and that the United States is losing allies (57%). In addition, 59 percent of Americans say that the United States is less respected now than it was 10 years ago, with 21 percent saying it is more respected now.”[99] They quote one survey respondent: “I think the world is laughing at us.”
That comment was not just a figure of speech. In the fall of 2018, Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly. At one point in his speech, he said: “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” Audience members laughed in his face.[100]
In the summer and fall of 2019, Americans started to learn that Trump had squeezed the government of Ukraine for political dirt. As a partial transcript of a July 25 phone call showed, he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “do us a favor” by investigating the Ukrainian business dealings of Joseph Biden’s son, as well as a crackpot conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election.[101] Trump and his defenders claimed that the demand merely reflected a deep concern about exposing corruption overseas. That claim was absurd. Throughout his entire career, the only thing that Trump ever wanted to know about corruption was how he could benefit from it. In 2012, he complained to CNBC about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; “Now every other country goes into these places, and they do what they have to do. It's a horrible law, and it should be changed. I mean, we're like the policemen for the world. It’s ridiculous.”[102] At a press availability after the scandal broke, a reporter asked: “Have you asked foreign leaders for any corruption investigations that don’t involve your political opponents? That is, are there other cases where you’ve asked for corruption investigations?” Trump could not think of one: “You know, we would have to look.”[103] Trump was not fighting corruption. He was abusing presidential power for political gain.
His actions helped Russia. For years, Ukraine has been fighting Russian-backed separatist militias. Trump put a hold on military aid to Ukraine, but had to relent when his pressure scheme came to light. During that hold, American diplomats William Taylor and Kurt Volker went to the front line of the conflict. “The commander thanked us for security assistance, but I was aware that this assistance was on hold, which made me uncomfortable,” Taylor testified. “Ambassador Volker and I could see the armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of the damaged bridge across the line of contact. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. military assistance.”[104] In the weeks to follow, more Ukrainians did perish.[105]
On September 25, Trump met with President Zelensky in New York. At a joint press availability, he made this astonishing comment: “And I really hope that Russia—because I really believe that President Putin would like to do something. I really hope that you and President Putin get together and can solve your problem. That would be a tremendous achievement. And I know you’re trying to do that.”[106] The stunned, nauseated look on Zelensky’s face said it all: Trump had just suggested a moral equivalence between the invader and the invaded. Once again, he had given Putin what he wanted.
If anyone in the world still thought that the Trump administration stood for American exceptionalism, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney offered a correction. In a press conference, he candidly admitted that the call to the Ukrainians amounted to a quid pro quo. “And I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”[107]
Allen C. Guelzo, “Abe’s Ticking Clock,” New York Post, April 12, 2011, https://nypost.com/2011/04/12/abes-ticking-clock.
Abraham Lincoln, Second Annual Message, December 1, 1862, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/second-annual-message-9.
Harry S. Truman, Address at the Ceremonies Commemorating the 175th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1951, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-ceremonies-commemorating-the-175th-anniversary-the-declaration-independence.
John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/234470.
Barack Obama, Remarks at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri, July 24, 2013, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-university-central-missouri-warrensburg-missouri.
Barack Obama, Commencement Address at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, May 28, 2014, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/commencement-address-the-united-states-military-academy-west-point-new-york-3.
Vladimir V. Putin, “A Plea for Caution from Russia,” New York Times, September 11, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html.
Gingrich Gibson, “Boehner ‘Insulted’ by Putin Op-ed,” Politico, September 12, 2013, https://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/john-boehner-insulted-by-putin-op-ed-096715.
Greta Van Susteren, “Vladimir Putin's Op-Ed on Syria; GOP House Freshmen Called to the White House on Syria; CIA Funneling Some Arms to Syrian Rebels,” Fox News Network, September 12, 2013, https://advance-lexis-com.ccl.idm.oclc.org/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:59BK-7M31-DXH2-64SG-00000-00&context=1516831.
Matt Twomey, “Putin Editorial Embarrasses US: Trump,” CNBC, September 12, 2013, https://www.cnbc.com/id/101030907.
Matt Wilstein, “Donald Trump to Piers Morgan: Obama ‘Can’t Compete’ with Putin’s ‘Amazing’ Op-Ed,” Mediaite, September 13, 2013, https://www.mediaite.com/tv/donald-trump-to-piers-morgan-obama-cant-compete-with-putins-amazing-op-ed.
Luke Johnson, “Mitt Romney: Russia Is ‘Our Number One Geopolitical Foe,” Huffington Post, March 26, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mitt-romney-russia-geopolitical-foe_n_1380801.
David Corn, “Donald Trump Says He Doesn’t Believe in ‘American Exceptionalism,’” Mother Jones, June 7, 2016, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/donald-trump-american-exceptionalism. Subsequent passages from the speech come from this source.
U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Updated Budget Projections: 2019 to 2019, p. 7, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-05/55151-budget_update_0.pdf.
“Transcript: Donald Trump on NATO, Turkey’s Coup Attempt and the World,” New York Times, July 21, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/22/us/politics/donald-trump-foreign-policy-interview.html.
Justin Fox, “Why London Has More Crime Than New York,” Bloomberg, June 19, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-19/why-london-has-more-crime-than-new-york.
Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2016, country report on the United States, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/united-states.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, “The Myth of Moral Equivalence,” Imprimis, January 1986, https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-myth-of-moral-equivalence.
“Bill O’Reilly’s Exclusive Interview with President Trump,” February 7, 2017, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/bill-oreillys-exclusive-interview-with-president-trump.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, February 28, 2016, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/703900742961270784.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, June 18, 2013, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/347191326112112640.
Jeffrey Lord, “A Trump Card,” The American Spectator, June 20, 2014, https://spectator.org/a-trump-card.
Eun Kyung Kim, “Donald Trump: ‘Putin Has Eaten Obama’s Lunch’ on Ukraine,” Today, March 13, 2014, https://www.today.com/news/donald-trump-putin-has-eaten-obamas-lunch-ukraine-2D79372098.
Bradford Richardson, “Trump Calls ‘Highly Respected’ Putin’s Comments a ‘Great Honor,’” The Hill, December 17, 2015, https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/263660-trump-calls-highly-respected-putins-comments-a-great-honor.
Philip Bump, “Donald Trump Isn’t Fazed by Vladimir Putin’s Journalist-Murdering.” Washington Post, December 18, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/18/donald-trump-glad-to-be-endorsed-by-russias-top-journalist-murderer/.
Transcript: NBC News Commander-In-Chief Forum, NBC News, September 7, 2016, http://press.nbcnews.com/2016/09/07/transcript-nbc-news-commander-in-chief-forum.
Transcript: NBC News Commander-In-Chief Forum.
‘This Week’ Transcript: Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden, and Ret. Gen. John Allen,” ABC News, July 31, 2016, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-donald-trump-vice-president-joe-biden/story?id=41020870.
Margaret Talev and Toluse Olorunnipa, “Trump Leaves Door Open to U.S. Recognizing Russia’s Crimea Grab,” Bloomberg News, June 29, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-29/trump-leaves-door-open-to-u-s-recognizing-russia-s-crimea-grab.
Antonio Nardelli and Julia Ioffe, “Trump Told G7 Leaders That Crimea Is Russian because Everyone Speaks Russian in Crimea,” Buzzfeed, June 14, 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertonardelli/trump-russia-crimea.
Greg Miller, “Trump Has Concealed Details of His Face-to-Face Encounters with Putin from Senior Officials in Administration,” Washington Post, January 13, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-has-concealed-details-of-his-face-to-face-encounters-with-putin-from-senior-officials-in-administration/2019/01/12/65f6686c-1434-11e9-b6ad-9cfd62dbb0a8_story.html.
Remarks by President Trump in Press Gaggle Aboard Air Force One en route Hanoi, Vietnam, November 11, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-gaggle-aboard-air-force-one-en-route-hanoi-vietnam.
Carol D. Leonnig, David Nakamura, and Josh Dawsey, “Trump’s National Security Advisers Warned Him Not to Congratulate Putin. He Did It Anyway,” Washington Post, March 20, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-national-security-advisers-warned-him-not-to-congratulate-putin-he-did-it-anyway/2018/03/20/22738ebc-2c68-11e8-8ad6-fbc50284fce8_story.html.
John McCain, Twitter post, March 20, 2018, https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/976147002244378625.
Remarks by President Trump and President Putin of the Russian Federation in Joint Press Conference, Helsinki, July 16, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-putin-russian-federation-joint-press-conference.
Rep. Will Hurd, Twitter post, July 16, 2018, https://twitter.com/HurdOnTheHill/status/1018931248457306115.
Remarks by President Trump in Cabinet Meeting, January 2, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-cabinet-meeting-12/.
“Trump’s Cracked Afghan History,” Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-cracked-afghan-history-11546560234.
Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, “Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 2: Russia’s Use of Social Media,” October 8 2019, https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Report_Volume2.pdf
U.S. Department of Justice, Special Counsel’s Office, Report on the Investigation, vol. I, p. 149.
Glenn Paskin, “The 1990 Playboy Interview with Donald Trump,” Playboy, March 1990, https://www.playboy.com/read/playboy-interview-donald-trump-1990.
Speech: Donald Trump in Raleigh, NC, July 5, 2016, https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-raleigh-nc-july-5-2016.
Transcript of Donald Trump’s December 30 speech in Hilton Head, SC, January 20, 2016, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-buzz/article55604115.html.
United Nations, Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, February 7, 2014, https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G14/108/66/PDF/G1410866.pdf?OpenElement.
Colin Campbell, “Trump: You’ve Got to Give That ‘Maniac’ in North Korea Some Credit,” Business Insider, January 9, 2016, https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-north-korea-kim-jong-un-2016-1.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, January 2, 2018, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948355557022420992.
John Wagner, “‘He’s a Tough Guy’: Trump Downplays the Human Rights Record of Kim Jong Un,” Washington Post, June 14, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/hes-a-tough-guy-trump-downplays-the-human-rights-record-of-kim-jong-un/2018/06/14/90ed487e-6fbb-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html.
Philip Rucker, “Trump Praises Kim’s Authoritarian Rule, Says ‘I Want My People to Do the Same,’” Washington Post, June 15, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/politics/trump-praises-kims-authoritarian-rule-says-i-want-my-people-to-do-the-same/2018/06/15/cea20aa2-70a5-11e8-bf86-a2351b5ece99_story.html.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks at a “Make America Great Again” Rally in Wheeling, WV, September 29, 2018, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-make-america-great-again-rally-wheeling-west-virginia.
Alex Ward, “Read the Full Transcript of Trump’s North Korea Summit Press Conference in Vietnam,” Vox, February 28, 2019, https://www.vox.com/2019/2/28/18241334/trump-north-korea-press-conference-full-text.
David A. Graham, “Trump Sides with North Korea against the CIA,” The Atlantic, June 11, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/06/trump-kim-no-north-korea-spying-under-my-auspices/591457.
Phelim Kine, “Killing and Lies: Philippine President Duterte’s ‘War on Drugs’ Exposed,” Human Rights Watch, March 9, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/09/killing-and-lies-philippine-president-dutertes-war-drugs-exposed.
“Transcript of Call between President Trump and Philippine President Duterte,” Washington Post, May 24, 2017, http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/transcript-of-call-between-president-trump-and-philippine-president-duterte/2446.
Mynardo Macaraig and Karl Malakunas, “Outrage after Duterte Justifies Philippine Journalists’ Murders,” AFP, June 1, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/philippines-duterte-endorses-killing-corrupt-journalists-155911848.html.
Remarks by President Trump and President Duterte of the Philippines before Bilateral Meeting, Manila, Philippines, November 13, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-duterte-philippines-bilateral-meeting-manila-philippines.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks Prior to a Meeting with President Abdelfattah Said Elsisi of Egypt, April 3, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/326548
Nancy A. Youssef, Vivian Salama, and Michael C. Bender, “Trump, Awaiting Egyptian Counterpart at Summit, Called Out for ‘My Favorite Dictator,’” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-awaiting-egyptian-counterpart-at-summit-called-out-for-my-favorite-dictator-11568403645.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks Prior to a Meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and an Exchange with Reporters in New York City, September 21, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/331313.
Remarks by President Trump upon Arrival of Air Force One, Fort Worth, Texas, October 17, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-upon-arrival-air-force-one-fort-worth-tx/.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, October 18, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1185219641972539392?s=20.
Josh Dawsey, “In Post Interview, Trump Calls Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed a ‘Strong Person’ Who ‘Truly Loves His Country,’” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-post-interview-trump-calls-saudi-crown-prince-mohammed-a-strong-person-who-truly-loves-his-country/2018/10/20/1eda48c0-d4d5-11e8-b2d2-f397227b43f0_story.html.
Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia, November 20, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-standing-saudi-arabia.
“Highlights: Key Quotes from the Reuters Interview with Trump,” Reuters, December 11, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-highlights/highlights-key-quotes-from-the-reuters-interview-with-trump-idUSKBN1OB075.
Manu Raju and Ted Barrett, “Senate Set to Rebuke White House’s Handling of Saudi Arabia after Khashoggi Murder,” CNN, December 6, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/06/politics/congress-khashoggi-yemen-saudi-arabia-reaction/index.html.
Luke Baker, “With Trump Sitting Nearby, Macron Calls Nationalism a Betrayal,” Reuters, November 11, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ww1-centenary-macron-nationalism/with-trump-sitting-nearby-macron-calls-nationalism-a-betrayal-idUSKCN1NG0IH.
Speech: Donald Trump in Mobile, Alabama, August 21, 2015, https://factba.se/transcript/donald-trump-speech-mobile-al-august-21-2015.
David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell, “‘I Like Them Very Much:’ Trump Has Long-Standing Business Ties with Saudis, Who Have Boosted His Hotels since He Took Office,” Washington Post, October 11, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-like-them-very-much-trump-has-long-standing-business-ties-with-saudis-who-have-boosted-his-hotels-since-he-took-office/2018/10/11/0870df24-cd67-11e8-a360-85875bac0b1f_story.html.
David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell, “Saudi-Funded Lobbyist Paid for 500 Rooms at Trump’s Hotel after 2016 Election,” Washington Post, December 5, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/saudi-funded-lobbyist-paid-for-500-rooms-at-trumps-hotel-after-2016-election/2018/12/05/29603a64-f417-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html.
David A. Fahrenthold, Jonathan O’Connell, and Morgan Krakow, “At Trump’s Big-City Hotels, Business Dropped as His Political Star Rose, Internal Documents Show,” Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-trumps-big-city-hotels-business-dropped-as-his-political-star-rose-internal-documents-show/2018/10/03/bd26b1d6-b6d4-11e8-a7b5-adaaa5b2a57f_story.html.
Shelby Hanssen and Ken Dilanian, “Reps of 22 Foreign Governments Have Spent Money at Trump Properties,” NBC News, June 12, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/reps-22-foreign-governments-have-spent-money-trump-properties-n1015806.
Antonio Development, “Trump Tower Philippines,” http://antoniodevelopment.com/trump-tower.html.
Richard C. Paddock et al., “Potential Conflicts around the Globe for Trump, the Businessman President,” New York Times, November 26, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/26/us/politics/donald-trump-international-business.html.
The Trump Organization, “Trump Towers: Istanbul, Turkey,” https://www.trump.com/residential-real-estate-portfolio/trump-towers-istanbul-turkey.
Ivanka Trump, Twitter post, April 20, 2012, https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/193337302066540545.
Ashley Dejean, “Donald Trump Has a Conflict of Interest in Turkey. Just Ask Donald Trump,” Mother Jones, April 18, 2017, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/trump-turkey-erdogan-conflict-interest.
Joshua Partlow, David A. Fahrenthold, and Taylor Luck, “A Wealthy Iraqi Sheikh Who Urges a Hard-Line U.S. Approach to Iran Spent 26 Nights at Trump’s D.C. Hotel,” Washington Post, June 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-wealthy-iraqi-sheikh-who-urges-a-hard-line-us-approach-to-iran-spent-26-nights-at-trumps-dc-hotel/2019/06/06/3ea74c5e-7bf9-11e9-a66c-d36e482aa873_story.html.
The Constitutional Accountability Center provides relevant documents and a useful timeline at https://www.theusconstitution.org/litigation/trump-and-foreign-emoluments-clause.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 73, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed73.asp.
Damian Paletta, “Trump’s ‘Take the Oil’ Plan Would Violate Geneva Conventions, Experts Say,” Wall Street Journal, September 8, 2016, https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/09/08/trumps-take-the-oil-plan-would-violate-geneva-conventions-experts-say/.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, December 21, 2011, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/149554857991352320.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, January 23, 2013, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/294161251137884160.
Donald J. Trump, Remarks at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia, January 21, 2017, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-central-intelligence-agency-langley-virginia-2.
Jonathan Swan and Alayna Treene, “Trump to Iraqi PM: How about That Oil?” Axios, November 25, 2018, https://www.axios.com/trump-to-iraqi-pm-how-about-that-oil-1a31cbfa-f20c-4767-8d18-d518ed9a6543.html.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, June 4, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/871328428963901440.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, June 2, 2017, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1135453895277203458.
Remarks by President Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference, February 24, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-conservative-political-action-conference.
Josh Dawsey, Damian Paletta, and Erica Werner, “In Fundraising Speech, Trump Says He Made Up Trade Claim in Meeting with Justin Trudeau,” Washington Post, March 15, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2018/03/14/in-fundraising-speech-trump-says-he-made-up-facts-in-meeting-with-justin-trudeau.
Zoya Sheftalovich, “Donald Trump: ‘Belgium Is a Beautiful City,’” Politico, June 16, 2016, https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-belgium-is-a-beautiful-city-hellhole-us-presidential-election-2016-america.
Remarks by President Trump to Troops at Al Asad Air Base, Al Anbar Province, Iraq, December 26, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-troops-al-asad-air-base-al-anbar-province-iraq.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, May 25, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1132459370816708608.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, May 25, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1132506111884636160.
Brooke Singman, “Fox News Exclusive: Trump Says Mueller Made a ‘Fool’ of Himself,” Fox News, June 6, 2019, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-exclusive-trump-says-mueller-made-a-fool-of-himself.
Jason Schwartz, “Trump’s ‘Fake News’ Mantra a Hit with Despots,” Politico, December 8, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/08/trump-fake-news-despots-287129.
“Video: PM Orbán Calls Index, Leading Hungarian Portal, A ‘Fake News’ Factory,” XpatLoop, June 8, 2018, https://www.xpatloop.com/channels/2018/06/video-pm-orban-calls-index-the-leading-hungarian-portal-a-fake-news-factory.html.
Zoltan Simon, “Trump Compared Orban to a Twin Brother, Ambassador Says,” Bloomberg, May 15, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-15/trump-compared-orban-to-a-twin-brother-envoy-tells-444-hu.
Julie Ray, “Image of U.S. Leadership Now Poorer Than China’s,” Gallup, February 28, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/poll/247037/image-leadership-poorer-china.aspx.
Richard Wike et al., “Trump’s International Ratings Remain Low, Especially among Key Allies,” Pew Research Center, October 1, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/10/01/trumps-international-ratings-remain-low-especially-among-key-allies.
Eric Parajon, Susan Peterson, Ryan Powers, and Michael J. Tierney, “Snap Poll: What Experts Make of Trump’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Policy, December 7, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/07/snap-poll-experts-trump-foreign-policy.
Dina Smeltz et al., “America Engaged,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, October 2, 2018, https://www.thechicagocouncil.org/publication/america-engaged.
Jordan Fabian, “UN Audience Laughs When Trump Boasts of Achievements,” The Hill, September 25, 2018, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/408260-un-audience-laughs-when-trump-boasts-of-achievements.
Memorandum of Telephone Conversation with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, July 25, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf
Jim Zarroli, “Trump Used to Disparage an Anti-Bribery Law; Will He Enforce It Now?” National Public Radio, November 8, 2017, https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=561059555.
Remarks by President Trump Before Marine One Departure, October 4, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-marine-one-departure-68/.
Deposition of William B. Taylor, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, October 22, 2019, https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/CPRT-116-IG00-D008.pdf.
Sabra Ayres and Sergei L. Loiko, “Trump Froze Military Aid—As Ukrainian Soldiers Perished in Battle,” Los Angeles Times, October 16, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-16/as-ukraine-waited-for-u-s-assistance-death-toll-on-eastern-front-line-grew.
Remarks by President Trump and President Zelensky of Ukraine before Bilateral Meeting | New York, September 25, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-zelensky-ukraine-bilateral-meeting-new-york-ny/.
Press Briefing by Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, October 17, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/press-briefing-acting-chief-staff-mick-mulvaney/.