Following his historic conviction in the hush money case, Donald Trump has attacked the US criminal justice system with unfounded claims of a “rigged” trial, echoing the Kremlin.
“If they can do this to me, they can do this to anybody,” Trump said Friday from his eponymous tower in New York.
Thousands of miles away, Russian President Vladimir Putin is probably “rubbing his hands in glee,” said Fiona Hill, a former senior White House national security adviser to three U.S. presidents, including Trump.
Hill and other analysts say Trump’s attacks could be useful to Putin and other autocrats as they seek to bolster their own people, influence the upcoming U.S. presidential election in which Trump is the Republican front-runner and weaken U.S. global influence.
Several authoritarian countries quickly responded by supporting Trump.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow agreed with Trump’s assessment of Thursday’s verdict, calling it “the elimination of a political opponent by all legal and illegal means.”
In September, Putin said Trump’s prosecution was political retaliation that “demonstrates the corruption of the American political system.”
After the verdict, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called Trump an “honorable man” and urged him to “keep fighting.”
China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said a guilty verdict against Trump would add to the “farcical nature” of this year’s US presidential election, intensify political extremism and bring “further chaos and social unrest”.
Analysts say Putin is especially likely to see the recent turmoil as an opportunity, as he has long sought to widen divisions in the West to advance Russia’s world view.
Russia has been accused of targeting dissidents abroad and carrying out multiple subversive operations to stomp up fears and foment discord since its invasion of Ukraine and ahead of key elections in Western countries this year.
Moscow is accused of meddling in the 2016 US election, which Trump won, by creating troll factories, hacking Hillary Clinton’s campaign, spreading fake news and trying to influence officials with links to Trump.
“What evil is Putin up to when there are people within the American system itself who are trying to undermine and destroy it?” Hill said of Putin.
Political turmoil could benefit the authoritarian regime by diverting Washington’s attention from key issues, including the war in Ukraine.
Russia’s goal is to move voices “from the fringes of political debate to the mainstream,” said David Salvo, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy in Washington, DC.
The Kremlin does this in part by pushing a Russian perspective under the guise of news stories and social media posts originating from Western countries.
Salvo pointed to the disagreements in Congress that delayed aid to Ukraine as the result of a Russian social media campaign targeting Americans, giving Russia the advantage on the battlefield.
Hill told The Associated Press that attacks on the US justice system by Trump and his allies were “perfect fodder” for a new “massive propaganda and influence operation” and suggested Russia could target swing votes in battleground states ahead of the November election.
For generations, successive U.S. presidential administrations have portrayed America as a bastion of democracy, free speech and human rights, and encouraged other countries to adopt those ideals.
But Trump suggested the justice system was being used to persecute him, as has happened in some authoritarian countries.
Graham Robertson, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said leaders including Putin “must be pleased” that Trump is criticizing “a key institution of democracy” in the way that autocracies have long done, thereby legitimizing them in the eyes of their own people.
Hill said Trump sees himself as an “authoritarian ruler” and looks to Putin for inspiration. Trump’s attacks are a wake-up call for countries from mild grievances to open enemies to “say it’s time to take down this giant,” she said.
The message to Chinese and Russians watching the drama unfold in the United States is that they’re better off at home.
The message to countries where Russia and China are trying to expand their influence in Africa, Asia and Latin America is that Moscow and Beijing can offer a more reliable partnership.
Matthew Kroenig, a former defense official and vice director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategic and Security Studies, said the threat from a “new axis of authoritarian states” that includes Russia, China, Iran and North Korea is “frightening,” and that these countries are working more closely together with overlapping interests.
Kroenig said Moscow in particular was likely to try to exploit political turmoil in the U.S. to divide the NATO security alliance by turning NATO citizens against the U.S. by making them question whether they have “common values” with Americans, he said.
If successful, it could lead to a fundamental restructuring of the global security architecture, a goal of Russia and China since the end of the Cold War.
Meanwhile, some Western governments are walking a fine line between their reluctance to exclude Trump as a potential presidential candidate and their need to respect the U.S. justice system. Others, such as EU member Hungary, have openly invited Trump.
“For Putin, it has to be perfect because it creates chaos that he can try to benefit from,” Hill said.
