President Donald Trump’s screed about Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he attacked the Ukrainian president using Russian propaganda, marked the first time — best as I can tell — that he publicly hinted at wanting to see someone else lead Ukraine.
Trump’s false accusation that Zelenskyy is an unpopular “dictator” who refuses to hold elections read like a classic case of projection. And it also seemed pretty obvious that Trump would like for the Ukrainian leader not to be president — and, you know, perhaps, for the replacement to be a bit more friendly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In that sense, the screed is just the latest example of Trump and his associates inserting themselves in other countries’ electoral processes, specifically in ways that benefit the president or further entrench his political allies abroad.
Trump’s false accusation that Zelenskyy is an unpopular “dictator” who refuses to hold elections read like a classic case of projection.
It’s a growing list that arguably began the day Trump took office and welcomed ascending Ecuadoran strongman Daniel Noboa — who has mirrored Trump’s tariff policy against Mexico — to his inaugural festivities during the South American leader’s own presidential campaign. At the time, I wrote about Trump’s unprecedented decision to invite foreign leaders to his inauguration. Breaking from that tradition stood to offer those leaders favorable photo ops at a helpful time.
And Noboa hasn’t been the only beneficiary.
On Wednesday, Trump defended the slashing of millions of dollars in aid for the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening. Essentially, these are nonprofit groups that help strengthen democratic processes in various countries, including India, by funding things like voter mobilization efforts and technical assistance for election officials. Trump falsely framed this funding as aimed at helping particular candidates get elected, a baseless claim that has also been made by officials in India’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party — that is, the party of Trump-friendly Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Meanwhile, during his trip to Europe last week, Vice President JD Vance met with a leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, fueling speculation that he was trying to sway the country’s election in favor of the extremist party, which has been criticized for its sympathies toward Nazism.
During his trip, Vance also denounced officials in Romania after the country’s Constitutional Court — citing Russian interference — canceled a presidential election after a pro-Putin, far-right candidate named Călin Georgescu won the first round of voting.
“You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections — we certainly do,” Vance said at the Munich Security Conference. “You could condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”
And then on Thursday, Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s pseudo-governmental group focused on purported “waste” in government, publicly called the chief judge of Romania’s Constitutional Court a “tyrant” amid pressure from the U.S. to let Georgescu run again in the May election.
The Trump administration’s obsession with foreign affairs sets up a startling contrast. Drivers of the self-proclaimed “America First” movement are laser-focused on governments abroad as their domestic allies dismantle our own government from within.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.