Strongman Leaders Are Making Us Weaker

Israel was made weaker by re-electing a strongman. The U.S. should not make the same mistake with Trump.

Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu at a White House news conference in January 2020 (Photos by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)

There are parallel crises playing out in two of the world’s democracies: in Israel, still reeling from the Hamas terror attack and now embroiled in a war in Gaza, and in the United States, where political paralysis and sabotage have left the nation vulnerable and unprepared to deal with escalating crises.

The similarities are both startling and stark. In Israel, the far-right government is led by a corrupt, populist strongman under criminal indictment. He has intentionally elevated radicals and extremists, who made an already explosive situation far worse. By sowing division and distrust, and by prioritizing his own power and self-interest while undermining the judiciary to escape legal accountability, Prime Minister Netanyahu lost the trust of military leaders and failed to keep the country secure, with devastating consequences.

In the U.S., a corrupt, far-right populist strongman is the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination while under multiple federal and state indictments. He has elevated and championed radicals and extremists in Congress, who have moved to protect him at every turn and to undermine the Justice Department and state prosecutors, all while seeking to withdraw the U.S. from its leading role in fighting aggressive, authoritarian regimes. By sowing division and undermining faith in our institutions, Donald Trump has lost the trust of military and civic institutional leaders while his lackeys have hobbled the Pentagon and State Department through brazen obstructionism and sabotage.

How are we to understand these disturbing parallels, especially as they fit within a larger framework of anti-democratic and authoritarian movements around the world? And what is the path back from the brink? 

In today’s piece, I’ll take a closer look at the common playbook Bibi and Donald are deploying. And while the crisis is already upon Israel, with a bloody and brutal war now underway, the situation in the U.S. has not yet led to a full blown military crisis. But the danger of a second Trump presidency—and what it would mean for our democratic safeguards, national unity, and civic and political institutions—looms large.

An indictment of Netanyhu’s failed leadership

Prime Minister Netanyahu is charged in three separate cases alleging six-figure bribery charges, quid pro quo arrangements for supportive media friends, and favors from a wealthy telecom mogul in exchange for favorable treatment. Despite these very serious charges, which call into question the transparency and honesty of government itself, Netanyahu won reelection as prime minister in 2022.

For Bibi it was, noted Prof. Ruth Ben-Ghiat—who studies and writes on modern authoritarian regimes and was a recent guest on the Big Q&A here— like “winning the prime minister lottery.” Netanyahu assumed power with a huge conflict of interest. After all, the best way for him to escape accountability was to use his new powers to try and dismantle the very judícial system that might put him in jail.

Netanyahu also declared that he would strive for a “fully right” government, despite narrowly winning reelection. According to Israel’s largest paper, Haaretz, Netanyahu “took overt steps taken to annex the West Bank” and “to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.”

He also elevated far-right extremists to key positions of power. These were loyalists who, like Netanyahu, weren’t interested in what was best for the country but rather what was best for their own political fortunes and ideology. Among those he appointed was Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who openly called for West Bank annexation. Netanyahu’s provocations also included, according to Haaretz, “massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Netanyahu’s proposals to strip the judiciary of the power to overturn laws led to massive street protests earlier this year. The power grab was so brazen and anti-democratic that scores of Israeli reservists resigned, stating they would refuse to answer the call for duty by such a government. Perhaps more ominously, some 10,000 reserve pilots, intelligence officers, and other military personnel threatened to resign from volunteer duty over Netanyahu’s anti-democratic judicial overhaul bill.

Netanyahu enfeebled top army and intelligence officers, whom he viewed as his political rivals. As the Haaretz editorial board observed, Netanyahu “marked the army, the Shin Bet security service, and a majority of the public as enemies of the people” in pursuit of his own evasion of accountability.

And it was within this poisonous atmosphere, where Israel appeared at war with itself and the military was less prepared for a surprise attack than at any point in 50 years, that Hamas decided to strike. They caught the Israel Defense Forces off-guard, leaving over a thousand people defenseless against a brutal terrorist attack, one that saw Hamas militants simply breaking through fortified barriers and attacking whole villages, with no rescue or assistance from the Israeli military for multiple hours as whole villages were slaughtered.

Netanyahu had campaigned and staked his reputation upon his tough, strongman reputation, and in exchange for the loss of democratic rights and an erosion of the rule of law, he had promised to keep the nation safe. But that all collapsed on October 7, and likely with it the political fortunes of Netanyahu. For the moment, he has accepted a unity government alongside opposition leader Benny Gantz, the former military Chief of Staff, and many predict that Bibi’s political career has finally met its end—at a terrible cost to the country he was supposed to keep safe and lead.

Same story, different player in the U.S.

Like Netanyahu, Trump is seeking to regain office in the shadow of multiple criminal charges—in his case, indictments in four federal and state jurisdictions with 91 charges total. The charges go far beyond the corruption scandals of Netanyahu and include three federal counts of conspiracy to overturn the national election results in 2020, obstruction of Congress, multiple violations of the Espionage Act, and state RICO charges over a conspiracy to overturn the results of the Georgia election of 2020. If convicted on these counts, Trump faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. 

The threats posed by potential criminal prosecutions are a principal reason why he is running and hoping to regain the White House. At least with respect to the federal charges, Trump could instruct a newly appointed Attorney General to dismiss the cases, or he could even seek to pardon himself—an untested area of the law. Even with respect to the state cases in New York and Georgia, his attorneys likely will argue that if the president cannot be indicted while in office, he certainly can’t be convicted or serve jail time, as that would make it impossible for him to act in an effective executive capacity.

Prior to his hoped-for re-election, Trump has not been idle. Like Netanyahu, Trump has helped place far-right extremists in power in key roles and has deployed effective flamethrowers such as Rep. Matt Gaetz to sow chaos and disable the government. He has supported and urged the elevation of MAGA extremists such as Rep. Jim Jordan, who has used his chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee to run interference on the state prosecutions and is threatening to hold hearings over the Justice Department’s cases.

Plus, Trump has used his social media platform, Truth Social, to launch attacks and threats upon witnesses, court officials, and both Justice Department and local prosecutors. The vast majority of his base of Republican supporters now see his criminal trials as political “witch-hunts” designed to keep him out of office rather than the natural consequences of the multiple crimes he has committed. As his trials approach, the attention of the nation will once again be upon Trump rather than the many problems the nation faces.

Trump’s lackeys in the Senate have acted as saboteurs as well. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s and Sen. Rand Paul’s one-man holds on top military and diplomatic appointments have left the Pentagon and the State Department without key leadership at a time of crisis in the Middle East. By one count, the following critical military and diplomatic positions remain vacant:

• Navy chief

• Air Force chief

• 5th Fleet commander + deputy

• CENTCOM #2 commander + #2 policy chief

• AFCENT #2 commander

• Ambassador to Israel

• Ambassador to Lebanon

• Ambassador to Egypt

• Ambassador to Kuwait

• Ambassador to Oman

Might enemies of the United States view us just like Hamas recently viewed Israel, weakened by our own internal divisions and sabotaged militarily and diplomatically, in this case by MAGA politicians? Could they see this as their best opportunity to strike, while we cannot seem to even get fully behind our own president in a time of crisis, nor even elect a leader for one of the two chambers of Congress?

Lessons can we draw

It may be too late for Israel not to suffer the deadly consequences of electing a strongman with a criminal record to the nation’s highest office, but it is not too late for the United States. Netanyahu’s self-absorption and corruption led directly to disastrous policy choices, including the elevation of extremists willing to destabilize Israel in order to pave the way for Netanyahu’s autocratic policies.

Currently, the GOP is being taken over by Trumpism, and the transformation is nearly but not quite complete. If Jim Jordan, who is Trump’s pick for Speaker, were to gain control of the House, that would push us closer to the brink. We might even see our legislative paralysis extend indefinitely, with no budget for our nation and no aid for our allies, including especially Ukraine. If there are any moderates left within the GOP, now would be the time to find a spine and stop the madness.

Above all, the American people must understand that the consequences of electing a leader under criminal indictment are vast and damaging. A prime minister or a president more interested in saving his own hide won’t care who he endangers or what system he wrecks in pursuit of his own get-out-of-jail-free card. That was clear in Israel, and it should already be clear to the U.S. electorate, or at least the part that isn’t glued to Fox.

All of the warning signs—from Trump’s key placements of loyal chaos agents, to the steady attacks upon the judicial system, to the sabotaging of our military and diplomatic leaders—are already flashing red, too. Officials in the Pentagon such as Gen. Mark Milley are speaking out against Trump and Trumpism and warning us of the dangers, but too many Americans have failed as yet to understand them.

Importantly, the media must stop representing the political decapitation of our military and diplomatic leadership as mere political gamesmanship, the lack of a House Speaker as Republicans simply clowning around, and the stochastic terror Trump invites upon our judicial officers as just more social media trolling. Rather, they are all part of the authoritarian playbook to leave democratic institutions vulnerable and dysfunctional so that strongmen can make their case that representative government has failed and only they can fix it.

Strongman leaders make us weaker because that’s exactly how they want us. Tragically, that left Israel weak in the eyes of its enemies. Let us not make the same mistake in the U.S.