News Journal: Our president praises dictators while criticizing democracies

For all of my life — which started when Franklin Roosevelt was in the White House — every President, Democrat or Republican, routinely voiced his commitment to helping countries around the world embrace democracy, although there were sometimes differing views on how to go about it.
No one I know of in either party disagreed when, for instance, George W. Bush said, “The best hope for peace in the world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” We took that belief as a given, something that was simply part of the fabric of being American.
Until January 20, 2017. From that inaugural date onward, President Trump has consistently attacked or belittled freely elected heads of state in democracies like the United Kingdom and Germany while embracing or praising despots in Russia, China, Turkey, Egypt, and the Philippines.
If you think that’s an exaggeration, read on, although space limitations allow me to mention only a few of many egregious examples of how Donald Trump has stood American foreign policy on its head.
Russia? Google “Trump on Putin” and you won’t find one negative comment about a man who just won a sham election, one in which his most popular opponent, Alexy Navalny, was not allowed to run. Another potential opponent, Boris Nemsov was conveniently killed.
Trump had previously shrugged this off, saying, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” On Putin: “He’s running his country. At least he’s a leader.” So when he called Putin after that election, it was no surprise that Trump ignored the all-caps DO NOT CONGRATULATE note his staff had placed in his briefing paper.
Nor was it a surprise he had nothing to say about the blatant poisoning Putin was responsible for in England, or his meddling in our election.
Less than a year ago, Trump made the same kind of congratulatory call to President Erdogan after he “won” an obviously corrupt referendum that essentially put the formerly democratic Turkey on a path to dictatorship, eliminating its parliamentary system and giving Erdogan absolute control of the country in 2019. Trump’s message was clear: the United States supports your strong man rule.
Philippine President Duarte has bragged that he would gladly slaughter three million drug addicts, threatened to shut down the legislature if it interferes with his plans, and warned members of the media that they are not protected from assassination.
“What a great job you are doing,” Trump told Duarte by telephone, “and I just wanted to call and tell you that.”
On China’s Xi Jinping becoming President for life: “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.”
President El-Sisi came to power in a military coup and has been ruthlessly expanding his iron-fisted power ever since. “We agree on so many things,” said Trump when he welcomed the Egyptian leader to the White House, “we are very much behind President El-Sisi.”
Sisi just won 97 percent of votes cast in another sham election and was immediately congratulated by — you guessed it —our President.
Contrast all that with what he has said about Angela Merkel (“she’s ruining Germany”), or how he has treated Canada’s Premier Justin Trudeau (knowingly lying to him and then bragging about it), or how he has hung up on both Mexican President Pena Nieto (for refusing to stop saying publicly that Mexico would not pay for the wall) and Australian President Turnbull (who wanted Trump to honor a previous agreement about refugees).
“We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate,” is how White House press secretary defended Trump’s recent call to Putin. She is right, of course. We don’t get to dictate. But we should certainly avoid giving open support to dictatorships and rigged elections. We should do everything in our power to support, not denigrate, friendly democracies.
The damage being done by President Trump’s preference for authoritarianism is being felt around the world. According to a January 2018 Gallup poll, other nations’ approval of U.S. leadership under President Trump fell to a historical low of 30 percent in 2017, down from 48 percent in just one year.
As alarming as that is, I am at least equally concerned about the effects on us, as Americans. What happens to us as a people if we no longer stand up for free elections and democracy?
Ted Kaufman is a former U.S. senator from Delaware.