It was a language he could understand. Donald Trump had lost the 2020 US presidential election, Russia’s Vladimir Putin told him last Friday, because it was rigged through mail-in voting.
Three days later, the president announced that lawyers were drafting an executive order to eliminate mail-in balloting, a method used by nearly a third of Americans that has not been credibly linked to election fraud.
That an American president might take advice on how to run elections from a Russian dictator – who wins sham polls in a landslide while his opponents disappear or die – would have been unimaginable a decade ago.
Related: Trump’s presidential philosophy is government by shakedown | Steven Greenhouse
But it was not so surprising from Trump, who has made a habit of blurring the boundary between domestic policy grievances and foreign policy goals. He is uniquely vulnerable to manipulation, critics say, because he views national and international affairs through a single prism of self-interest.
Charlie Sykes, a conservative author and broadcaster, said: “In Donald Trump’s world there’s no significant distinction between what he does internationally and what he is doing domestically because all centers on himself. There’s no ideological through-line or consistency.
“It’s all about what serves his own personal interests. The notion that you would roll out the red carpet for an internationally wanted war criminal 19 months after he murdered [opposition leader] Alexei Navalny would be vomit-inducing in any context. But given Trump’s long history with Vladimir Putin, I suppose it should be expected.”
The conflation has been on display in Trump’s approach to immigration, with countries such as El Salvador currying favour by imprisoning the victims of mass deportation, and in his claim that trade tariffs will produce a renaissance of domestic manufacturing. Sanctions against Venezuela and Cuba were framed as appeals to domestic constituencies such as Cuban and Venezuelan exile communities in Florida.
Trump’s first impeachment by the House of Representatives was a result of his effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. But no country has played a more outsized role than Russia. In 2016 Trump asked Russians to hack his rival Hillary Clinton’s emails; this year he baselessly accused Barack Obama of “treason”, claiming he plotted to sabotage his first presidency by linking him to Russian election meddling.
Then came last Friday’s much-hyped summit between Trump and Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. During a brief press conference, Putin assured the US president that, had he won the 2020 election instead of Biden, the war in Ukraine would never have happened.
It was a talking point that Trump has deployed endlessly on last year’s campaign trail and since his return to the White House in January. It has been echoed by rightwing media but studiously avoided by foreign leaders. For it now to be parroted by Putin was evidently the validation that Trump craved.
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, said: “Donald Trump seems to have an inexplainable affinity for everything Vladimir Putin does and the way in which Russia’s elections are manipulated and not free and fair seems to be something Donald Trump aspires to to maintain power.
“When Donald Trump echoes the sentiments of a murderous dictator, war criminal, enemy of the United States and decides to translate that into domestic American politics, it should raise alarms to everyone as to why he would want to emulate anything Vladimir Putin suggests.”
Trump’s inward-looking obsessions also pose a challenge for visiting heads of state. During the past seven months many have been obliged to sit impassively as he holds court on Democrats, fake news or other local concerns that would normally be reserved for a domestic audience.
On Monday, with the eyes of the world on the Oval Office, it was the turn of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to sit tight as Trump digressed on the topic of his law and order crackdown in Washington DC, recalling a recent conversation with a friend.
“He has a son who’s a great golfer,” the 79-year-old president rambled. “He’s on tour and he came in fourth yesterday in the big tournament where Scottie Scheffler made the great shot. And he said his son is going to dinner in Washington DC tonight. I said, ‘Would you allow that to happen a year ago?’ He said, ‘No way. No way.’”
When a reporter asked Trump about his social media post regarding mail-in ballots, the president acknowledged, “Well, that’s a very off topic,” but could not resist embarking on a long and winding answer that included his vow to terminate mail-in voting and descended into a rant against Democrats: “Because with men and women’s sports, and with transgender for everybody, and open borders, and all of the horrible things, and now the new thing is, they love crime.”
Notably, the Republican Trump’s encounter with Zelenskyy also included criticisms of his Democratic predecessor that were again reminiscent of the campaign trail. “Look, this isn’t my war; this is Joe Biden’s war,” Trump said. “Joe Biden, a corrupt politician, not a smart man – never was.”
The Ukrainian leader, who in 2023 heaped praise on Biden for making a surprise visit to Kyiv, and last year paid tribute to the 46th president’s “strong decisions” and “bold steps” in supporting the war effort, remained silent.
Trump’s habit of bad-mouthing his predecessors marks yet another radical break from tradition. Whatever their private thoughts might have been, Ronald Reagan did not publicly denounce Jimmy Carter’s handling of the Iran hostage crisis when hosting foreign dignitaries, nor did Barack Obama lambast George W Bush for the invasion of Iraq.
Joel Rubin, a former assistant deputy secretary of state, commented: “I find it shocking because American presidents historically leave other American presidents alone. They’ll criticise policies but they don’t go for personal taunts.
“America’s strength as a country when it comes to foreign policy is our consistency and bipartisan mindset and national patriotism. The denigrating of previous American presidents in front of international audiences is very stark and very different. Trump is doing something that nobody else has done before.”
Trump’s default, Rubin added, was to say that Biden was the worst at everything. “It wasn’t like they asked him about Biden. He chose to bring it up. It conveys a deep insecurity about his sense of place and what he’s doing. He’s attempting to demonstrate greatness by continually denigrating others.
“If the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, was interviewed and constantly trashing Sunak or Cameron or whatever – ‘Oh, those people they did Brexit’ – it gives off an image as if the country is coming unglued.”
Comments