Let’s face it. Running the biggest superpower in the world, surrounded by strongmen who are actively working towards your destruction, is a job that’s not for the faint of heart. Yet in recent years, the Democrat occupiers of the Oval Office have been just that — weak men.
During their terms as president, Joe Biden and Barack Obama were more concerned with how suburban wine moms and mullahs felt about them than whether Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, or the radical Islamic regime in Iran respected their will to defend America and protect its interests. That’s sort of a rhetorical statement because we know Biden and Obama had no intention of pursuing what was best for America. The world’s strongmen knew that, too.
This is how we ended up with an emboldened Putin invading Crimea under Obama’s watch. It’s how Putin became so emboldened to invade Ukraine under Biden’s watch. It’s also how we ended up with an increased Chinese military presence around Taiwan and throughout the South China Sea under Biden.
Who could forget that instead of putting the fear of God into Iran so it wouldn’t develop a nuclear warfare capability, Obama tried to buy its leaders off, literally, with a planeload of cash?
Seriously, what type of president do you want facing off with the likes of Putin or Xi Jinping? A squish? A corrupt Democrat who takes our enemies off to the side to assure them that he’s really on their side?
Is this the type of person you want sitting across from the summit table with Xi Jinping?
The reality is that in the high-stakes world of geopolitics, the tyrants and dictators, the authoritarian regimes, the terrorist organizations, and the Third World have no appreciation for “discourse” and compromise. In their world, it’s winner-take-all. The only question for them is, “Can we get it all now, or do we have to play the long game?”
So long as Trump is in the White House, the world’s strongmen have decided to play the long game. Why? Because they understand his strength, and more importantly, they know of his will to use it.
The language of strongmen is fear, coercion, intimidation, and force. It’s not strongly worded statements or diplomatically crafted condemnations. From a foreign relations standpoint, Trump speaks their language. He counters them in the only language they understand, but he does so on behalf of America’s interests.
From his aggressive tariff strategy to his willingness to preemptively take out Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Trump has demonstrated the kind of will that speaks to Putin and Xi Jinping, who now clearly have decided to wait Trump out until his successor is in office.
The same holds true for America’s so-called allies, who for years have imposed devastating tariffs on American imports to their countries.
While Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney likes to accuse Trump of being “unilaterally unfair,” Canada has long had steep tariffs in place against certain U.S. products that Carney doesn’t like to talk about.
Under Canada’s supply management system, its tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) have severely limited imports of American dairy, poultry, and eggs. American dairy products have been hit with tariffs that range from 200% to 300%. American poultry exports to Canada have been slammed with tariffs in the 245% to 285% range. And American eggs have faced over-quota tariffs of 168% or more in Canada.
So, while Carney plays the innocent victim in Canada’s trade dispute with the Trump administration, while he frames Trump as an economic dictator, it’s actually America that is newer to the tariff game than Canada. There are plenty of similar examples in Europe and Asia as well. The major change has been that once Trump decided to use tariffs as a negotiation tool, he went in big, and he’s been relentless.
Domestically, Trump is anything but a strongman in the dictatorial sense. He’s completely respectful of the role the executive branch plays as only one of the three branches of American government, which also consists of the legislative and judicial branches.
While Trump is a fighter, and he takes his fights to Capitol Hill and to the courts on a regular basis, at the end of the day, he works within the system, not above it or around it. This defies the very notion that he’s a tyrannical strongman, as his critics like to describe him.
The late Scott Adams wrote his book Win Bigly in 2017, which analyzed Trump’s unique persuasion skills. Based on his study of Trump, though not included in his book, Adams liked to characterize Trump’s strongman archetype as a “benevolent authoritarian.” The contradiction in terms is intentional, and it’s a reflection of American strength itself.
Because American democracy has built-in checks on power, you will always have this tension between competing interests – between the executive branch and Congress; between the other branches and the judicial. It’s respect for the process and the American republic that gives Trump his benevolence. But it’s his fierce desire to protect and look after America’s interests that gives him his geopolitical strongman posture.
It doesn’t hurt that by nature, Trump is an off-the-charts Type A personality. As such, he instinctively understands how traditional strongmen think and act.
In 1984, Barton Cummings wrote a book called Advertising’s Benevolent Dictators, in which he interviewed the giants of the advertising industry. I think I read it twice. The running theme in the book, as reflected in the title, is Cummings’ quest to better understand the balance between strong and forceful leadership – the kind that can change society – and the benevolence and empathy required to understand the people you’re trying to lead so that you can best lead them. In the ad business, this is now a non-negotiable aspect of leadership. Organizations made up of creatives can do great things, but leading them is like, as they say, herding kittens – sometimes very angry and temperamental kittens.
I suspect that Adams was familiar with this book, and that this was at least in part where Adams found his inspiration for his framing of Trump’s political leadership style: “benevolent strongman.”
None of this is obvious when you watch Trump or his critics in action. Trump typically plows full tilt toward his objective. While the empathy for the American people is always present, he almost never leads with that. To be sure, if you get in the way, you could easily be a political casualty.
At the same time, he’s doing everything he does as president to protect and advance American interests. His critics and opponents don’t like to acknowledge any of this, but I think they know it. In fact, it’s what I think they fear most about him. Instead, they like to characterize him as a strongman, just like Xi Jinping or Putin.
The primary difference between Trump and them is that they don't intend to leave, while Trump doesn't intend to stay beyond 2028. This is why there is such a sense of urgency to everything he does.
On the one hand, I can see Trump taking the left's calling him a strongman as a compliment, because he wants people like Putin and Xi Jinping to fear and respect him. On the other hand, the framing is missing the most important component, which is Trump’s love of America and his reverence for American democracy.
In January 2029, Trump will peacefully turn over the reins of power to the next president, not reluctantly, but respectfully. For it’s just this form of government, and all of the rights and freedoms it stands for, that he’s fighting for today with everything he’s got.
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