The fascination that authoritarian leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and others, hold for Donald Trump is no accident. It stems from his deeply held personal beliefs and the importance he places on the exercise of power.
A classic case of a narcissistic “know-it-all,” the American president, at every stage of his life, always wants to be right about how he perceives life and its course. One of his significant strengths, however, is his negotiating ability and the way he can exercise it within an environment that is favorable to him in this regard; we can say that Donald Trump, is now, with considerable method, charting a new course for American democracy—one of democratic authoritarianism.
Donald Trump’s first election to the presidency in 2016 sparked a vigorous defense of democracy by the American establishment. Yet his return to office was met with striking indifference. Many of the politicians, experts, media executives, and business leaders who viewed Trump as a threat to democracy a decade ago appeared, in 2025, to be watching events unfold with a fair amount of fatalism.
Donald Trump, having decided in 2014 to become actively involved in politics, was seeking a platform on which to carry out his activities. However, under no circumstances could that ground be the democratic system in place in most of the countries that make up the so-called Western world.
At this level, Donald Trump, following suggestions from his Russian friends and financiers, began to take an interest in and analyze, with his advisors, the anti-Western speeches of Russian President Putin, for whom he harbored great sympathy. He thus concluded that Putin was not accusing the West of its “capitalist system” but of its moral and political decline.
“As an opportunistic capitalist,” says Steve Bannon, Trump’s former communications advisor, the then-real estate agent realized that for Russia, the problem was not capitalism, but liberal democracy.
With particular interest, the future U.S. president began to study and draw inspiration from the ideas of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, known for his views on the revival of a Greater Russia. It is even said that Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) ideology has its roots in Dugin’s views on a great Russian empire, dominant across Eurasia.
As early as 2016, Dugin’s rhetoric regarding Ukraine and the West was aggressive, arguing that his country is at war with globalization and liberal democracies. Dugin’s influence, though disputed, is considered by many analysts to be decisive for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy. He may reject the label “Putin’s brain, ” but his constant presence in the media and his ideas about the restoration of the Russian empire make him a significant player in Russia’s political discourse.
However, in recent years, Dugin has developed ties with Trump supporters, participating in interviews with prominent figures in the American media, such as Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. On their podcasts, he attacks “wokeism,” trans activists, and George Soros, going so far as to claim that the system of globalization is responsible for the escalation of the war in Ukraine.
The synchronized political stance of Trump and Putin, who support the need to end the war in Ukraine, appears to align with Dugin’s philosophical pursuits. “I’m interested in Trump and Trumpism, ” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
It is also worth noting that to the extent that Trump “plays” with the Christian religion, Dugin’s philosophy involves promoting Orthodox Christian ideology in Eurasia, with a particular emphasis on unifying the former Soviet republics and preserving Russian identity. He believes that Trump can help Russia regain its influence by reducing American dominance on the world stage.
His bibliography, which includes the work "The Trump Revolution", applauds the president’s policy decisions aimed at dismantling international organizations, attributing these moves to the suspension of globalization.
From the above, it is abundantly clear that the current American president, first, detests liberal democratic Europe, which he views as an obstacle to his ideology and its spread. Second, the reality of Putinism convinces Trump that a form of authoritarianism can exist in the Western world without destroying the constitutional order.
What lies ahead is not a one-party dictatorship, but competitive authoritarianism —a system in which parties compete in elections, but the ruling party’s abuse of power restricts the opposition.
Most of the authoritarian regimes that have emerged since the end of the Cold War fall into this category, including Alberto Fujimori’s Peru, Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela, modern-day El Salvador, Hungary, India, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Under competitive authoritarianism, the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, remains intact. Opposition forces are legitimate and politically recognized. They can thus seriously challenge for power. Elections are often intense battles in which the incumbent rulers have to work hard to win. And from time to time, the ruling establishment loses, as happened in Malaysia in 2018 and in Poland in 2023. But the system remains.
Government mechanisms and political structures are designed to serve a specific political power, which holds inherent comparative advantages in the arena of political competition.
For example, Putin and Erdogan can be elected as many times as they want, but not the President of the United States. The so-called “competitive authoritarianism” that Trump seeks to establish would, admittedly, accept multiparty elections, but these elections would be unfair.
Under this system, Donald Trump’s advisors argue that “the abuses of minority dictatorship.” That is, the actions and excesses of civil society groups seeking to impose union-style rights.
And from this perspective, we must say that the excesses of these groups brought Trump to power.