After his historic guilty verdict in a hush money case, Donald Trump attacked the criminal justice system in the United States and made unfounded comments about a “rigged” trial, reminiscent of comments from the Kremlin.
“If they can do this to me, they can do it to anyone,” Trump said Friday in remarks from the tower that bears his name in New York. Thousands of miles away, Russian President Vladimir Putin was probably “rubbing his hands with glee,” said Fiona Hill, a former senior White House national security adviser who worked under three U.S. presidents, including Trump.
Hill and other analysts said Trump’s attacks could be useful to Putin and other autocrats trying to improve their image among their citizens, perhaps influence the upcoming U.S. presidential election, in which Trump is the likely Republican nominee, and undermine Washington’s global influence.
Some autocratic countries were quick to express their support for Trump.
Moscow agreed with Trump’s view of Thursday’s verdict, which Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov described as “elimination of political rivals by all legal and illegal means.” Putin said in September that Trump’s prosecution was a political vendetta that “shows the rot of the American political system.”
After the verdict, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called Trump a “man of honor” and urged him to “keep fighting.”
The Global Times newspaper, a Chinese state media, suggested that Trump’s conviction compounds the “absurd” nature of this year’s presidential election in the United States, adding that it would aggravate political extremism and end “more chaos and social disorder.”
Putin is especially likely to see the latest developments as an opportunity, according to analysts. He has long attempted to increase divisions in Western societies in an attempt to foster a Russian worldview. Since the invasion of Ukraine and ahead of crucial elections in several parts of the West this year, Russia has been accused of carrying out multiple sabotage and attacking dissidents abroad to aggravate anxiety and sow discord.
Moscow was accused of interfering with the 2016 US election that Trump won by creating a troll factory, hacking Hillary Clinton’s campaign, spreading fake news and trying to influence people associated with Trump.
“What mischief does he have to do when there are people within the American system itself who denigrate and undermine him?” Hill said of Putin.
Political chaos can benefit autocratic leaders by distracting Washington from important issues such as the war in Ukraine. Russia’s goal is to bring more voices “from the margins of political debate to the mainstream conversation,” said David Salvo, managing director of the Alliance to Secure Democracy at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, D.C.
The Kremlin does that in part by spreading Russian views under the guise of news and social media posts originating in the West.
Salvo noted that the disagreements in Congress that have delayed an aid package to Ukraine came after a Russian social media campaign targeting Americans. That allowed Russia to take the initiative on the battlefield.
Attacks on American justice by Trump and his allies are “perfect ammunition” for another “major influence and propaganda operation,” Hill told The Associated Press, suggesting Russia could target undecided voters in battleground states before the election. of November.
For generations, successive American governments have described their country as a bastion of democracy, free speech and human rights, and have urged other states to adopt those ideals. But Trump suggested that the judicial system was being used to persecute him, something that happens in some autocratic countries.
Leaders like Putin “must love” that Trump is criticizing “the key institutions of democracy” in the same way that autocratic states have done for years, since it legitimizes them in the eyes of their own people, said Graeme Robertson, a political science professor. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Trump sees himself as a “strongman” in government and looks to Putin for inspiration, Hill said. His attacks encourage any country, from those with mild disputes to the openly hostile, to “seize their moment.” to bring down the colossus,” he added.
The message to Russian and Chinese citizens watching events unfold in the United States is that they are better off at home. The message to countries Russia and China court in their efforts to gain influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America is that Moscow and Beijing can offer more reliable alliances.
The threat from the “new axis of authoritarians,” which includes Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, is “considerable” as those states collaborate more closely and have common interests, said Matthew Kroenig, a former defense and military official. vice president of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.
Moscow in particular, Kroenig said, is likely to try to take advantage of political disputes in the United States to divide the NATO security alliance. It could try to turn the population of NATO states against the United States by urging them to question whether they have “shared values” with Americans, she said. If successful, that could fundamentally transform the global security architecture established after the end of the Cold War, a goal of Russia and China.
Some Western governments, for their part, are caught in a delicate balance between not wanting to disown Trump, given that he could be the next US president, and the need to respect the US justice system. Others, like Hungary, which is part of the EU, openly praise the former president.
“For Putin it must be perfect, because it creates a ruckus 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.
AP
