Trump Spends Peace Summit Whining How He Wants a Police State

Donald Trump is in Egypt celebrating a historic ceasefire arrangement between Israel and Gaza—but he can’t stop fixating on the imagined crime crisis he believes is taking place back on U.S. soil.

Seated next to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Monday, Trump’s proud exaltation of the authoritarian state offered some startling insight into the way he seems to want to manage America.

“We’re in a country where a friend of mine is a very powerful leader, and my friend of mine is right here,” Trump said. “The reason I call him the general is because he’s both, and he’s good at both, he’s done a fantastic job.”

“They have very little crime, because they don’t play games, that’s why. They don’t play games like we do, in the United States, with governors that have no idea what they’re doing,” the U.S. president continued. “But they don’t have crime. I ask about crime, and they almost don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

Egypt is categorized as “not free” by an analysis from Freedom House, a democracy advocacy organization that formed to rally the world against the threat of Nazi Germany nearly a century ago. Political opposition in Egypt is nearly nonexistent. Civil liberties that are currently taken for granted in the U.S., such as the right to protest or the freedom of the press, are choked by the tight fist of the Egyptian government, which has been dominated by the military since a 2013 coup.

“Most of Egypt’s provincial governors are former military or police commanders,” Freedom House assessed.

Why Trump might admire Egypt’s regime is no secret. Trump has made enemies out of his stateside opposition, publicly calling for the political persecution of Democratic lawmakers who have dared to object to his agenda, including Senator Adam Schiff, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, and more.

Just last week, the president threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a nineteenth-century law that would let him utilize the military for domestic purposes, to quell fictitious bedlam that he claims has taken over Democratic cities.

One such area that Trump has homed in on is Portland, Oregon, a city better known for Voodoo Doughnuts and cold brew than hellish riots. Late last month, the president ordered the National Guard to the hipster paradise, but his rationale for sending them was not informed by statistics or data—instead, it was because of something he saw on TV.

“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said at the time, referring to a phone call he had with Oregon Governor Tina Kotek. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking, and there are fires all over the place.… It looks like terrible.”

At a meeting of world leaders Monday, President Donald Trump claimed he is “the only one that matters” while heaping praise on Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“We love Viktor,” Trump said onstage at a Gaza “peace summit” in Egypt, where he told the prime minister, “You are fantastic, alright?”

“I know a lot of people don’t agree with me,” Trump went on, “but I’m the only one that matters when—. You are fantastic.”

Trump continued to honor the Hungarian prime minister, who has indeed earned his fair share of critics for striving to dismantle liberal democracy in his country. Since taking office in 2010, Orbán has seized control of independent governmental institutions, curtailed press freedoms, and targeted his political opponents, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people.

“He’s a great leader,” Trump said. “I endorsed him the last election he had, and he won by 28 points. So you’re going to do even better this time if you have another election,” he added, assuring him, “We’re behind you 100 percent.”

With parliamentary elections taking place next spring, Orbán’s ruling party, which has dominated Hungarian politics for 15 years, appears to be trailing a new opposition party in public opinion polls. As the Center for European Policy Analysis notes, this has raised concerns—which may ring familiar here in the U.S.—that if Orbán were to lose, he may refuse to accept defeat and instead challenge the integrity of the vote.

Donald Trump’s Cabinet has once again demonstrated that it is just as blindly devoted to the president’s cult of personality as his most ardent MAGA supporters are.

“It’s about transforming the region,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Egypt, right after stating that Trump’s Middle East Peace plan was bigger than “restoring” Gaza. “We have an incredible partner and a long alliance, a tremendous collection of leaders. This is clearly, in my mind—and I think in the mind of everyone in this room—probably one of the most important days for world peace in fifty years. And that’s not an exaggeration.”

“Only fifty?” Trump chimed in.

Rubio then proceeded to exaggerate.

“Maybe 100! Really since the end of World War II.”

Rubio responded to Trump’s comment like a dog would respond to its owner, and he isn’t the only one. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, FBI Director Kash Patel, and countless other Cabinet members have turned positions that are historically aimed to be independent of the president into glorified sycophants.

Peace in Gaza is tenuous at best, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear that he would prefer to keep the conflict going indefinitely. This deal is not a switch to flip, it will take years to fully come into fruition—if it isn’t broken by Israel.

And peace for whom? Rubio’s comments come as Poland prepares its military for increased violence from Russia, as war rages on in Sudan, and as the National Guard tears through the streets of U.S. cities.

While President Trump continues to tout his supreme international peacemaking abilities, Europe prepares for all-out war. 

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Poland has increased its military spending to the point that it is 4.7 percent of its entire gross domestic product. For reference, military spending is around 3 percent of the U.S. GDP. 

This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin ratchets up aggression against Poland and its neighbors to the west. Just last month, Russian drones were seen in Polish airspace, forcing the NATO ally to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to ready its defense systems against the incursion. Poland’s leadership invoked Article Four of the NATO Treaty the next day, calling the ​​situation the “closest” that Poland had come to armed conflict “since the Second World War.” Three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace just days after, in yet another significant display of aggression meant to test NATO’s cohesiveness. 

Now Poland is prepared to stop its former invader’s current one. 

“This is our war,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the Warsaw Security Forum in September. “We decided to arm Poland and modernize the Polish army on a massive scale.”

Poland’s increased military spending has produced a situation where the nation now has more than 210,000 military personnel (trailing only the U.S. and Turkey in NATO); a large territorial defense force; and $50 billion of American-made weaponry, including Abrams tanks, and a Polish version of the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS. Poland is also armed with multiple South Korean rocket launchers and had its soldiers participate in monthslong war games to test out the new equipment.

“In the case of war, Poland will be a very busy country because the military will mobilize, the economy will mobilize, but we would also have to prepare for NATO coming to—and through—Poland,” Armed Forces Operational Commander Lt. Gen. Maciej Klisz told the Journal. 

These developments paint a stark contrast to President Trump’s endless rhetoric in which he presents himself as the “President of Peace,” claiming to have ended six, seven, and sometimes even 10 wars. While that is obviously a severe exaggeration, the war preparations in Poland and the greater European NATO region only further weaken that tenuous claim.  

Last week, the White House bragged that a video of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming the ongoing government shutdown on Democrats is “currently playing at every public airport in America.”

But according to local reports, airports across the country—from Washington state to New York—have announced their refusal to subject travelers to the propaganda.

“It is TSA’s top priority to make sure that you have the most pleasant and efficient airport experience as possible while we keep you safe,” Noem says in the video, which is intended to be shown to people waiting in Transportation Security Administration lines. “However, Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted, and most of our TSA employees are working without pay.

“Our hope is that Democrats will soon recognize the importance of opening the government,” the homeland security secretary continues.

Travelers at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Washington will be spared the message. “The Port of Seattle will not play the video on its screens at SEA Airport, due to the political nature of the content,” a Sea–Tac spokesperson told local outlets.

Also in Washington, Spokane International Airport is refusing to play the video, due to the airport’s “First Amendment Policy,” which prohibits the display of political advertising content on airport-owned monitors in public spaces.

Oregon’s Portland International Airport won’t show it either, on the grounds that the video could violate the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from certain partisan political activities. “We believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits using public assets for political purposes and messaging,” said a PDX spokesperson, who also cited state law prohibiting public employees from promoting or opposing “any political committee, party, or affiliation.”

In New York, the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which oversees the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and the Niagara Falls International Airport, has declined as well, citing a “long-standing policy” against “partisan messaging.”

Ditto Westchester County Airport in New York. According to the Westchester County executive, the message was determined to be “inappropriate, unacceptable, and inconsistent with the values we expect from our nation’s top public officials,” as it “politicizes the impacts of a federal government shutdown on TSA Operations” and has an “unnecessarily alarmist” tone.