Donald Trump is playing to a crowd that makes a big deal of hating government oppression—defined here as not giving white people all the things they want at any given moment—but he has quite the history of admiring oppressive governments himself. He added to that list over the weekend:
“If you look at North Korea, this guy, he’s like a maniac, OK?” Trump said at a rally in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Saturday.
“And you’ve got to give him credit: How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals and all of a sudden, you know, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it. How does he do that?” he added.
I mean, like, a maniac, but an amazing, strong maniac! “He’s gotta have something going for him,” Trump says. Something like the Chinese had back in 1989, maybe, as Trump explained in an interview back then:
When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak ... as being spit on by the rest of the world--
Donald Trump is not about our country being perceived as weak. And North Korea and Tiananmen Square are apparently among his models for non-weakness. You’d think people who are freaking out that President Obama modestly expanding background checks for gun buyers would consider what that could mean for their precious liberty under a President Trump … but then, they probably think that kind of oppression is just fine as long as it’s directed at someone else, and it doesn’t occur to them it could end up directed at them.