The totalitarian tell in Trump's "unity" speech
Kim Jong Un and Victor Orban are role models for a type of unity, but not the type you would enjoy
By now you have no doubt heard that Donald Trump (a man who, I should note, has spent years urging his supporters to commit violent acts against his political adversaries and journalists) used his speech at the Republican convention to issue a call for “unity.” That’s what many of the nation’s newspaper’s told you via today’s front pages, and what many of the post-speech television talking heads claimed last night.
This is of course extremely false. During his speech Trump derided “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” and attacked Democrats for supposedly divisive rhetoric and accused them of “using covid to cheat,” an unexplained and incoherent lie, whatever it means. You are not trying to unify America if you are calling a leader of the opposing political party “Crazy Nancy Pelosi.” Obviously. Some may pretend not to understand this, but zero people actually fail to understand this.
So where did all those headlines come from, if not from reality?
One explanation is that the prepared text of Trump’s speech1 was a bit less Trumpy than the meandering 90-minute speech Trump actually delivered. As political scientist Brendan Nyhan noted, “early print deadlines” led journalists to rely on the prepared text they received in advance instead of covering what Trump actually said.
But the more important explanation is that America’s most important news companies have abdicated their essential role in democracy. Even if Donald Trump had delivered his speech exactly as prepared, never deviating a bit, media coverage of his speech that touted his calls for unity would still be terrible journalism. That’s because Trump’s calls for unity are not sincere, and simply running a politician’s insincere claims as banner headlines is not journalism, it’s advertising.
The value the news media can and should provide to its readers and listeners exists not in simply amplifying Trump’s attempts to mislead. Nobody needs the Detroit News to tell them “Trump: We must heal discord” or the Pioneer Press to tell them “Trump takes a unity tone.”2 They’re perfectly capable of watching Trump’s speech themselves if they want to know what Trump said. The value the news media can provide exists in helping readers and viewers contextualize and assess politicians’ statements, not in simply repeating them. In this case that means centering the fact that Trump is the most intentionally divisive politician in modern American history; that he regularly incites violence and peddles racism and sexism. Simply echoing Trump campaign talking points about a kinder, gentler Trump seeking unity does not help readers or viewers understand what’s going on — it helps Trump deceive them.
While the media was quick to adopt the Trump campaign’s preferred talking points, the most important passage in Trump’s speech has received almost no media attention: Trump rambled on at length about his fondness for Viktor Orban and Kim Jong Un — both of whom, Trump suggested, want him back in the White House.3
Victor Orban is the Hungarian authoritarian who has become something of a role model for the Republican Party (as I have previously explained.)
Kim Jong Un is, of course, the North Korean dictator4 known for ordering the executions of political figures including members of his own family.
An American presidential candidate using his party’s nominating convention to express admiration for foreign dictators — and to tout their endorsement of his campaign — seems pretty noteworthy to me. And it caught the eye of at least one New York Times reporter, too:
Yet Trump’s praise for Orban is entirely absent from the New York Times’ news coverage of Trump’s speech. A search for the words “Trump” and “Orban” on the Times’ website since the speech yields only two results: A transcript, and a Maureen Dowd opinion column that spent only three words (“praising Viktor Orban”) on the matter.5
Trump’s praise for Victor Orban and Kim Jong Un was the most important part of his speech not only because it foreshadows what America would be like under a Trump regime but also because it explains what Trump really means when he talks about “unity.”
Trump (and the media companies carrying his water) want persuadable voters to think he means something warm and fuzzy about everyone getting along like we did back in … well, never. But what Trump really means by “unity” is everyone falling in line under his rule — or else.
Take a look at Trump’s “Uniting our Nation” message four days ago:
Nothing about, you know … not being racist, or about strengthening the social safety net so nobody has to go without food or shelter. “Uniting our Nation,” to Donald Trump, means declaring Donald Trump above the law. That isn’t unity, it’s autocracy.
And that’s where Victor Orban and Kim Jong Un come in. They impose “unity” by seizing control of the media and cultural institutions and cracking down on dissent, as totalitarians throughout history have done:
On Page 155 of the latest eighth-grade history textbook, students are told that Mr. Orban thinks refugees are a threat to Hungary — and then encouraged to believe he is right. “It can be problematic,” the book concludes, “for different cultures to coexist.”
It is a testament to the scope of Mr. Orban’s program for remaking Hungary that part of the far-right leader’s message is now woven into the school curriculum.
For the past eight years, Mr. Orban has waged a systemic assault on the hardware of Hungary’s democracy — rewriting the national Constitution, reshaping the judiciary and tweaking the electoral system to favor his Fidesz party. Less conspicuously, Mr. Orban is also trying to recode the software of Hungary’s democracy — its cultural sphere, civil society and education system.
[…]
For many pro-democracy Westerners, Mr. Orban’s efforts to build an “illiberal democracy” inside the European Union is chilling. Among many far-right populists on both sides of the Atlantic, he is revered.
“He’s a hero,” Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former strategist, said this month while touring Europe. He described Mr. Orban as “the most significant guy on the scene right now.”
Here’s Trump last night, speaking admiringly of Orban:
Hungary, strong country. Run by a very powerful, tough leader. He’s a tough guy. The press doesn’t like him because he’s tough. […] Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, very tough man.
“The press doesn’t like him because he’s tough” might seem like just another weird Trump aside, but it’s an announcement of intent. A threat.
And here’s more from Trump’s speech:
I got along very well, North Korea, Kim Jong Un. I got along very well with him. The press hated when I said that.
Again, that sounds like a threat, if you know anything at all about North Korea.
Reporters Without Borders ranks North Korea 177th out of 180 nations in its 2024 World Press Freedom Index:
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the government’s official mouthpiece, is the only permitted news source for North Korea’s media. The regime tightly controls the production and distribution of information and strictly prohibits independent journalism. […]
Kim Jong-un, son and grandson of late dictators Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, is the supreme leader of a totalitarian regime that bases its power on surveillance, repression, censorship and propaganda. He personally ensures that the media only imparts content that praises the party, the military, and himself.
[…]
As a result of the regime’s desire for complete isolation from the world, journalists have been arrested, deported, sent to forced labour camps, and killed for deviating from the party’s narrative. In 2017, the government even sentenced South Korean journalists to death in absentia for only commenting on the country’s economic and social situation.
This is what Donald Trump means when he talks about “unity.”
Trump and his backers are threatening to deport political protesters and have long made clear their desire to use the military to crack down on political protests. They are openly planning to crack down on the news media:
The four-time indicted, twice-impeached disgraced former president, Donald Trump, who admitted Tuesday that he will govern as a “dictator” on “day one” should he win office again, is overtly vowing to weaponize government and seek retribution against the news media, showing no regard for the First Amendment protections afforded to the Fourth Estate.
The alarming rhetoric against the nation’s journalists, whom Trump has consistently and insidiously referred to as the “enemy of the people,” has also been echoed by his top allies, indicating the promises of revenge are not the rantings of a madman, but the actual intended course of action should the Republican presidential frontrunner manage to seize power again.
In a particularly disturbing conversation this week, Trump’s former top political strategist, Steve Bannon, and former National Security Council adviser, Kash Patel, openly discussed plans to target the press. Bannon, who underscored that such promises are “not just rhetoric” and that they are “absolutely dead serious” about seeking revenge against journalists, asked Patel, who would likely serve in a second Trump administration, whether he could “deliver the goods.” Patel responded affirmatively, vowing that a re-empowered Trump would indeed “come after” the press.
Donald Trump is not being subtle about what he really means by “unity.” He intends to impose autocratic rule on America, taking control of the news media, cracking down on dissent, and seizing unchecked power for himself. And many of the nation’s most important news companies seem to be submitting their applications to be allowed to function as state media under a Trump regime.
Or at least the excerpts of it that were distributed to journalists beforehand in an effort to secure misleading media coverage.
Two actual headlines I did not make up.
TRUMP: Hungary, strong country. Run by a very powerful, tough leader. He’s a tough guy. The press doesn’t like him because he’s tough. And he came out recently. They were asking him at an interview: The whole world is exploding, what’s happening, what’s going on. Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, very tough man. […]
He said, “There’s only one way you’re going to solve it. You got to bring President Trump back to the United States because he kept everybody at bay.”
True. He used a word I wouldn’t use because I can’t use that word. Because you’d say it was braggadocious. The press would say, “He was a braggart.” I am not a braggart.
[…]
I got along very well, North Korea, Kim Jong Un. I got along very well with him. The press hated when I said that.
“How could you get along with him?”
Well, you know, it’s nice to get along with someone who has a lot of nuclear weapons or otherwise. See, in the old days, you’d say that’s a wonderful thing. Now they say, “How can you possibly do that?”
But no, I got along with him and we stopped the missile launches from North Korea. Now, North Korea is acting up again. But when we get back, I get along with him. He’d like to see me back too. I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth.
Sorry, “supreme leader.”
Meanwhile the Times’ homepage currently features articles about the last night of the Republican convention written by the paper’s television critic and fashion critic.
I mean, he didn’t just praise Orban and Kim—he cited their endorsements as reasons he should be back in office. At other times, he’s cited the contempt Western democracies have for him as reasons he should be back in office. This is not subtle, and the people who make enormous amounts of money to cover national politics do not find this significant.
And yes, for Trump peace, harmony and unity means “Shut up and do what I tell you.” Every domestic abuser thinks that way.
My wife is Hungarian. The irony of this textbook you quote is that Hungary has *always* been a cultural crossroads, a place where different cultures have *always* coexisted. Otherwise they'd all be speaking Turkish, if nothing else. But their greatest 19th-century literature describes a vibrant multicultural nation.
The only reason Fidesz adopted this hate-the-other attitude is that when they lost power in the early noughties, they hired Art Finkelstein as a consultant and he taught them how to be Republicans. This is why the GOP admires Orbán - he's literally done what they hope to do. He *is* the GOP.