When El Salvador’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, held his inauguration this summer, the guests of honor included Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson and Rep. Matt Gaetz, the firebrand Republican from Florida.
Right-wing celebrities attended the swearing-in ceremony at El Salvador’s National Palace, joined in the lavish black-tie dinner that followed and posed for numerous photos with Bukele, who wore a gold-embroidered black suit, something between a military uniform and a Nehru jacket.
“I came because there’s something extraordinary happening here,” Carlson later told Bukele during an interview for the former Fox News host’s podcast.
“You are the most popular elected official in the world — a demonstrable fact,” Carlson added as the two sat among elephant ear plants in Bukele’s leafy backyard.
“Honored to be at @nayibbukele’s inauguration to support a leader willing to fight globalism for the good of his people,” Trump Jr., now known as X, wrote on Twitter after leaving a one-on-one meeting at the palace with Bukele. “We need more like him.”
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele and First Lady Gabriela Roberta Rodriguez wave from a balcony after being sworn in for a second term in San Salvador, El Salvador, June 1.
(Salvador Meléndez / Associated Press)
The guests did not seem bothered that Bukele’s inauguration for a second term on June 1 was unconstitutional until his supporters crafted an exception. Nor did they seem bothered by Bukele’s record of human rights abuses, repression of dissent and manipulation of democracy.
The high-profile endorsement of Bukele fits into a broader effort by former President Trump to build a network of like-minded allies around the world in preparation for what he hopes will be a second term.
In many ways, this is a continuation of the policies Trump pursued in his first presidency, which broke precedent and upended the Western world order. As president, Trump scorned staunch U.S. allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel and embraced autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Honduras’ Juan Orlando Hernandez, now serving a 45-year sentence in a U.S. federal prison for drug trafficking.
Since losing the 2020 presidential race, Trump and his allies have continued to court those foreign leaders, including several who would likely not receive red-carpet treatment in a Democratic-controlled White House.
There is the proudly illiberal Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, who has met with Trump Sr. at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida on several occasions.
Orbán, who has ruled Hungary for nearly a quarter of a century, has arrogated to himself the power to rule by decree, ignore parliament and use taxpayers’ money to spread disinformation, especially about immigrants, LGBTQ people and other democracies.
He is the only one of the 27 EU countries to openly admire and support Trump, and it is mutual. Trump has repeatedly praised Orbán as “a great man, a strong man.”
Along with Bukele, both controversial leaders — as well as Argentina’s President Javier Milei — spoke at this year’s convention of the U.S. Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a must-attend annual event for the right now largely seen as an arm of the Trump campaign.
Argentine President Javier Milei gestures to the audience after giving a speech at CPAC Brazil 2024, a conservative event, in Balneario Camboriu, Brazil, July 7.
(Heuler Andrey / Associated Press)
In contrast, the Biden administration sent only a mid-level delegation to Bukele's inauguration.
Members of the Biden administration have accused Bukele of undermining El Salvador’s core democratic institutions, including the judiciary and legislature. Bukele has governed using emergency powers that allow for arbitrary detention and the indefinite suspension of numerous civil rights.
Foreign policy experts say that reaching out to autocrats helps legitimize them and deprives the United States of moral authority on the world stage.
“Every time we embrace a dictator, it makes it much harder the next time we try to support democracy,” said Benjamin Gedan, a former National Security Council official now at the Wilson Center.
Trump and his envoys say they are finding common ground with many foreign leaders who have been frustrated by the Biden administration's efforts to impose liberal values on their countries, such as gay, transgender and reproductive rights, said Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC.
“These are other countries that are facing some of the same challenges … that we are facing in the United States,” Schlapp said. These include a “widespread attack on the family and traditional understandings of gender.”
Schlapp, who also attended Bukele’s inauguration, added: “When I heard his songs, I thought it was beautiful: family. God.”
Schlapp says there is a huge demand for Trump appearances abroad these days. “We get requests for videos of Trump, for other people close to Trump to come,” he said.
Another key figure in keeping Trump’s global flame alive has been Richard Grenell, whom Trump has continued to call “my envoy” long after both had left office.
Best remembered as Trump's ambassador to Germany, he is often mentioned as a possible secretary of state if Trump is elected.
Earlier this year, Grenell was in Guatemala following that country’s presidential election. Guatemalan voters had elected a leftist anti-corruption activist, Bernardo Arévalo, over the more conservative establishment candidate. Right-wing forces were trying to prevent Arévalo from taking office.
Grenell openly and assertively supported efforts to block Arévalo, even as the Biden administration and much of the international community fought for a peaceful transfer of power.
Many of the foreign leaders Trump is courting are equally interested in establishing ties with the Republican presidential nominee.
Bukele paid hundreds of thousands of dollars through an Argentine public relations and lobbying firm covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act to attract Trump acolytes to El Salvador and present a positive image of himself in support of Trump in the United States, according to Salvadoran news site El Faro.
El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2024, in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 22.
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
On July 4, Bukele took to social media to congratulate the American people on Independence Day, but his message seemed to be aimed at a conservative American audience and was reminiscent of earlier times.
“We are inspired by you,” Bukele wrote, “not by the ideals you have now, but by the ideals you had in 1776 when you obtained your freedom and built the foundations of your great country.”
But alliances with autocrats can be problematic for both sides, as Bukele has since discovered.
Despite all the effort Trump, his family and his advisers put into courting Bukele, the former president publicly mocked the Salvadoran leader last month during a speech at the Republican Party convention.
Trump dismissed Bukele's claim to have reduced El Salvador's homicide rate through careful policy, saying El Salvador is simply sending its worst criminals to the United States.
Bukele played it down: “Taking the right path,” he tweeted.
