The foreign leaders who are rooting for Trump
President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. Zeman, an admirer of Vladimir Putin, holds a mostly ceremonial position, and the Czech government disagrees with him. But Orban is the leader of a powerful political current in Central Europe: nationalistic, xenophobic and autocratically minded. He gave a speech praising Trump for, among other things, favoring a halt in Muslim immigration and opposing “the policy of exporting democracy.”
Orban is a role model for Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, known for declaring that “Islam has no place in Slovakia ,” and Poland’s de facto leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose party has been accused by the European Union of dismantling democratic checks and balances.
This year Netanyahu has been conspicuously silent. But sources say he’s inclined to agree with the right-wing media close to his Likud party that have tilted in Trump’s favor. True, Trump has made anti-Semitic statements and attracted a neo-Nazi following. But he’s far less likely to pressure Netanyahu about Palestinian statehood than Clinton, who once called the Israeli leader to deliver a blunt chewing-out over the expansion of a Jewish neighborhood near Jerusalem.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... c5793ec05fEven more partial to Trump is Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi. The dictator met both candidates in New York last month: While Clinton brought up his human rights record and called for the release of an imprisoned U.S. citizen, Trump offered unqualified support. So never mind Trump’s hostility to Islam or plans to restrict Muslim immigration; the Sissi regime is pulling for him. So is Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, another NATO ally, who, as the Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov reported, likes Trump’s tolerance for his mass repression of opponents following a coup attempt.
