Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost is a gift to dictators around the world
Ajoke making the rounds in diplomatic circles says that President Trump is lucky there’s no American embassy in Washington D.C., because, according to State Department practice, the U.S. diplomatic mission would be denouncing his authoritarian effort to disavow the outcome of a free election.
In fact, Trump’s outlandish claim that he won the Nov. 3 election is a godsend to Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, Nicaraguan autocrat Daniel Ortega and authoritarian rulers around the world.
Not surprisingly, Ortega said on Nov. 8 that he “respects” Trump’s claims of electoral fraud. Alongside Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, Ortega is one of the few presidents who has yet to recognize Joe Biden’s victory.
Autocrats now feel vindicated for having refused to obey the people’s will in past elections, and they can laugh off U.S. criticism of their schemes to stay in power indefinitely. Next time the U.S. government criticizes them for their attacks on democracy, they will be able to say, “The U.S. should get its own house in order first.”
This came to mind when I read U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Nov. 9 tweet saying that former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman will be barred from entering the United States because his corrupt and political actions “undermined democratic institutions in Nicaragua.”
It was just the latest of many statements that the U.S. government routinely issues criticizing autocrats or imposing sanctions against them. As recently as Oct. 9, the U.S. Treasury Department slapped new sanctions on members of Nicaragua’s ruling Ortega family.
“It’s hypocritical for Pompeo to say this, because he himself is being an accomplice of something similar in the United States,” Arturo Valenzuela, former U.S. State Department chief of Latin American affairs, told me, referring to the sanctions against Alemán.
What’s worse, Pompeo seemed to applaud Trump’s refusal to accept the presidential election’s outcome, saying on Nov. 10 that there will be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” If Pompeo was joking, it was a very bad joke that undermines the State Department’s post-Cold War tradition of trying to be a world champion of democracy.
“The United States is losing credibility,” Carlos Gutierrez, former U.S. Secretary of Commerce under George W. Bush, told me. “After what Trump has done, how can we criticize other countries for not respecting the people’s will?”
Don’t get me wrong, Trump has the right to ask for investigations of alleged irregularities and to demand recounts of contested elections when they are legally allowed. But claiming against all evidence that, “I won this election, by a lot” is a coup attempt that is common in banana republics, not in the United States — until now.
As of this writing, more than a week after the elections, Trump and his disinformation peddlers have not shown one shred of proof that there were widespread irregularities that affected the electoral results in any state.
To the contrary, Biden has won the elections by a far wider margin that Trump did in 2016. Biden has won both the popular vote and the Electoral College, while Trump only won the latter four years ago. What’s more, Biden has won in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by more votes than Trump got in 2016.
It’s pretty clear that Trump’s refusal to concede is pure political theater, aimed at leaving the White House as an alleged victim rather than as a loser, retaining his leadership of the Republican Party and having a shot at the 2024 elections.
Trump will leave the White House on Jan. 20, whether he likes it or not. But his actions will hurt America’s moral authority to defend democracy around the world, while bolstering dictators.
Of course, dictators and populist demagogues have dismissed unfavorable election outcomes in the past and will continue to do so.
But Trump’s scandalous behavior will help normalize their actions. They will be able to say that, even in the United States, presidents refuse to accept election losses. That’s why Maduro, Ortega and their ilk must be saying to themselves, “Donald!.”