Perhaps the most surprising aspect of U.S. President Donald Trump’s rapid alignment with Russia is that pundits have acted so shocked.
In recent weeks, Trump has gone from labeling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator,” to having a meltdown while meeting with him in the Oval Office, to pausing all U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Commentators have offered convoluted theories about Trump’s moves, speculating about complex strategic gambits in pursuit of Ukraine’s natural resources or increased European defense spending. Others have offered that Trump’s actions are rooted in narcissism and personal sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The reality is simpler: Trump’s MAGA ideology aligns more closely with Putin’s vision of state, society, and global order than with Western liberal democracy.
Liberals have long emphasized that ideas, not just interests, shape international politics. Former U.S. President Joe Biden framed the current era as a new cold war, marked by a contest between liberal democracy and right-wing autocracy. Within this binary, serious nonpartisan observers have noted that Trump’s ideological loyalties lie with right-wing authoritarians. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, famously called Trump “fascist to the core.” In other words: Trump literally plays for the other team.
Last week’s Oval Office exchange between Trump and Zelensky was the latest case in point. In the meeting, Zelensky underscored traditional liberal principles, emphasizing that his mistrust of Russia stems from Putin’s repeated violations of international norms, laws of war, and bilateral and multilateral agreements. In his subsequent Fox News interview, Zelensky reinforced the need to uphold Ukrainians’ human rights, arguing that the path to this goal lies in rules-based international cooperation—the “infrastructure of security guarantees” that provides the only route to a “just and lasting peace.”
Trump’s furious reaction to Zelensky was unsurprising if one considers how his autocratic peers have responded to similar liberal arguments. In the European Parliament last October, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban responded just as emotionally when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confronted him over his support for Russia. Orban lashed out, calling her statements a “political intifada,” “leftist lies,” and “pure political propaganda.”
The Trump-Zelensky meeting was not an isolated incident. Just a few days earlier, the United States joined Russia and North Korea in opposing a United Nations resolution that acknowledged basic facts about Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Elsewhere in Europe, the Trump administration actively supports far-right parties and pro-Russia candidates. Trump has also denounced the European Union as a project aimed at undermining the United States.
Beyond Europe, Trump’s foreign-policy shifts are equally revealing of his illiberal tendencies. His cuts to U.S. foreign aid disproportionately targeted programs supporting democracy, human rights, and minority protections. He has appointed to senior positions right-wing activists who openly question the United States’ value-based posture in Asia. Last May, Darren Beattie, Trump’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, called for the United States to abandon Taiwan in a grand bargain with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Trump’s worldview is further evidenced by his embrace of long-standing autocratic tropes. His obsession with gender ideology mirrors a core pillar of right-wing authoritarian politics, from Putin to Orban. Like them, Trump is now pushing anti-LGBTQIA+ policies as far as the U.S. legal system allows.
With same-sex marriage protected by a Supreme Court decision for now, Trump’s initial target is the vulnerable transgender community. His crackdown has taken cruel forms: mandating the misgendering of individuals on passports, eliminating federal protections against anti-trans discrimination, and stripping federal funding from any K-12 schools that acknowledge multiple gender identities.
Aware of the public controversy surrounding issues such as transgender women’s participation in competitive sports, liberal commentators and politicians have been cautious about raising alarm over Trump’s actions. Yet the deliberate effort to incite hatred against a specific group is a classic hallmark of right-wing authoritarianism—most infamously seen in Nazi antisemitism, homophobia, and anti-Roma racism. The broader goal is not just to marginalize vulnerable minorities, but to dismantle liberal equality itself and replace it with rigid social hierarchies.
Simply put, the authoritarian vision is one in which the strong and privileged have the right to dominate and oppress the weak. For the far right, the only alternative to domination is submission at the hands of marginalized groups; the so-called “great replacement theory” finds its origins in this Darwinian framing. In domestic policy, it means defending the privileges of straight, white American men above all others.
Internationally, this zero-sum logic leads to imperialism. If domination and submission, rather than rule-based cooperation, are the only valid courses of action, then Russia is simply acting in preemptive self-defense when it makes territorial claims over weaker neighbors, such as Ukraine. By the same logic, the United States would be justified in pressuring or subjugating smaller partners such as Panama, Canada, or Greenland, as Trump has threatened to do.
Some observers may struggle to accept the grim reality that Trump is an authoritarian because he remained grudgingly committed to traditional trans-Atlantic alliances during his first term. However, the trajectories of other right-wing populists demonstrate that they become more radical and illiberal the longer they remain in power.
This pattern is particularly striking when a right-wing leader experiences a hiatus between their first and second terms in office. Orban governed from 1998 to 2002 before returning to power in 2010, while the Polish populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, governed from 2005 to 2007 before reclaiming that mantle in 2015. In both cases, the leaders’ initial terms fell within the bounds of democratic conservatism.
However, after being ousted by liberal forces, Orban and Kaczynski returned to power with much darker agendas, systematically dismantling democratic institutions. Since 2010, Hungary’s prime minister has constructed what political scientists describe as a “mafia state,” with the ruling party exerting control over the judiciary, media, education, and key sectors of the country’s private economy. From 2015 to 2023, Poland’s PiS government largely followed the same trajectory.
Anyone who believes in liberal democracy must unequivocally recognize the second Trump administration’s illiberal nature and develop a democratic defense strategy.
Above all, such a strategy is crucial for the institutional opposition: the U.S. Democratic Party, which has so far been slow to respond to Trump’s authoritarian moves. In other countries that have ousted right-wing populists, civil society mobilized to reject attempts to introduce undemocratic rules and push back against the normalization of illiberal narratives. It is vital that the Democratic Party hold accountable those who violate the law in pursuit of raw power.
At the same time, liberal democrats must address the root causes of the rise of the authoritarian right. Specifically, they must consider how to make liberal democracy more appealing to conservative citizens. The lessons of the Cold War are instructive. Just as the West countered the allure of communism by building robust democratic welfare states, today’s democracies must consider how to tangibly respond to conservative anxieties, particularly about the rapid pace of social change and losing long-standing social privileges.
On Ukraine, appeasement is not an option. Europe should absolutely increase its defense spending—but without any illusion that doing so will earn favor with the White House. Even if every NATO member were to meet Trump’s ambitious 5 percent GDP target, he would likely remain unimpressed. He would probably misrepresent the relevant figures, just as he recently did when minimizing the scale of European aid to Ukraine or overstating the amount of fentanyl that crosses into the United States from Canada.
On a global level, liberals must demonstrate how the right-wing international project underdelivers on the world’s challenges. Liberal and left-wing outrage often plays into populists’ hands, helping them deflect attention from their own policy failures. The more that liberals lament Trump’s treatment of Zelensky, the less they focus on a fundamental truth: Trump has no viable plan to end the war in Ukraine. The only path to peace in Ukraine lies in liberal European leadership. Trump is not an ally in that fight.