After your history guilty verdict in his hush money case, donald trump attacked the US criminal justice systemmaking baseless claims of a “rigged” trial that echoed Kremlin comments.
“If they can do it to me, they can do it to anyone,” Trump said Friday, speaking from his namesake tower in New York on Friday. Thousands of miles away, Russian President Vladimir Putin was probably “rubbing his hands with joy,” said Fiona Hill, former White House national security adviser to three U.S. presidents, including Trump.
Hill and other analysts say Trump’s attacks could be useful to Putin and other autocrats as they seek to boost their standing among their own citizens, potentially influencing the upcoming U.S. presidential election, in which Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee. , and undermine the global economy of the United States. influence.
Some autocratic countries reacted quickly in support of Trump.
Moscow agreed with Trump’s assessment of Thursday’s verdict, calling it “the elimination of political rivals by all possible legal or illegal means,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. In September, Putin said Trump’s indictment was a political vendetta that “shows the rottenness of the American political system.”
Following the verdict, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called Trump a “man of honor” and urged him to “continue fighting.”
Chinese state newspaper Global Times suggested that Trump’s conviction adds to the “ridiculous nature” of this year’s US presidential elections, adding that it will worsen political extremism and end in “more chaos and social unrest.”
Putin is especially likely to see the latest turmoil as an opportunity, analysts say. He has long sought to widen divisions in Western societies in an attempt to promote a Russian worldview. Since the invasion of Ukraine, and ahead of crucial elections across the West this year, Russia has been accused of carrying out multiple sabotage attacks it’s from targeting dissidents abroad to feed anxieties and sow discord.
Moscow was accused of interfering in the 2016 US elections, which Trump won by creating a troll factory, hacking Hillary Clinton’s campaignspreading out fake news and trying to influence Officials linked to Trump.
“What harm does he have to do when there are people within the American system itself denigrating it and tearing it down?” Hill said about Putin.
Political chaos could benefit autocratic leaders by distracting Washington from key issues, including the war in Ukraine. Russia’s goal is to move voices from the “margins of political debate into the mainstream,” said David Salvo, Managing Director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C.
The Kremlin does this, in part, by promoting Russian views under the guise of news and social media posts that appear to originate in the West.
Salvo noted that the differences in Congress that delayed a aid package Ukraine followed a Russian social media campaign aimed at Americans. This led to Russia gaining the upper hand on the battlefield.
Attacks on the US judicial system Trump and his allies are “perfect fodder” for another “massive propaganda and influence operation,” Hill told the Associated Press, suggesting that Russia could target swing voters in swing states ahead of the November elections.
For generations, U.S. presidential administrations have portrayed America as a bastion of democracy, free speech and human rights and encouraged other states to adopt these ideals. But Trump has suggested that the judicial system is being used to persecute him – something that happens in some autocratic countries.
Leaders, including Putin, “must love” that Trump is criticizing “the core institutions of democracy” in the same way that autocratic states have done for years by legitimizing them in the eyes of their own people, said Graeme Robertson, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Trump sees himself as a “strongman ruler” and looks to Putin for inspiration, Hill said. His attacks encourage any nation — from those with mild grievances to the openly hostile — to “take their moment to take down the colossus,” Hill said.
The message to Chinese and Russian citizens watching the drama unfolding in the US is that they are better off at home. The message to the countries that Russia and China are courting as they try to expand their influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America is that Moscow and Beijing can offer more reliable partnerships.
The threat from the “new axis of authoritarians,” including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, is “scary” as these states work more closely with overlapping interests, said Matthew Kroenig, a former defense official. and vice president of the Atlantic Council. Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Moscow in particular, Kroenig said, will likely try to use the political turmoil in the US to split the NATO security alliance. It could try to turn the public of NATO states against the US, encouraging them to question whether they have “shared values” with Americans, he said. If successful, it could lead to a fundamental reshaping of the global security architecture – a goal of Russia and China – since the end of the Cold War.
However, some Western governments are caught in a delicate dance between not wanting to ostracize Trump as a potential next US president and the need to respect the US judicial system. Others, like EU member Hungary, openly court him.
“For Putin, it must be perfect because it creates confusion that he can try to take advantage of,” Hill said.
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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
