Whose side is Trump on anyway? Worldwide or at home: it is not pro democracy

 While the Trump regime dismantles cybersecurity agencies responsible for protecting the US from foreign intervention in our elections,  it is busy supporting anti-democratic movements and pro-Russian cohorts abroad. From Germany to Bosnia lately, Trump and his close supporters get credit for wins by anti-democratic forces.  The success of the AfD political party winning an election in a German state, Saxony, shook many with the fear that a neo-Nazi-tinged party like AfD (described as a far right party) signaled a resurgence of fascism in Germany. Who did the AfD thank for their win? Elon Musk..  Money in politics in Europe is carefully regulated, and there is no evidence Musk contributed that, but what he did was offer verbal political and moral support, for which the AfD gave thanks.  

Trump continues to play footsie with Putin:   

In a country I follow closely, Bosnia, a pro-Russia party won in the Serbian ethnic-friendly semi-autonomous Republika Srpska, and gave credit for their win to Trump. and Putin. Trump sent his advisors to help this Putin ally win. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/us/politics/trump-advisers-republika-srpska.html.     Update: Per an article in the Atlantic, published October 31, 2026, by Isaac Stanley-Becker, Milorad Dodik, the pro Russian leader of Republika Srpska, has been invited and is planning to atted a meetig in Mar-A-Lago post the Nov. 3 midterms. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/10/serbia-dodik-russia-maga/689246/

Update: 10/10/2026 Not only did Trump send his advisors to aid a Putin ally in Srpska Republika, but he allegedly made a deal with Putin to import diesel from Russia, and blew up the sanctions against Russia in doing. Ukraine responded by blowing up the terminal that would export diesel to the US, pr google AI this am: Ukrainian long-range drones struck and set ablaze the Yug Rusi oil-loading terminal at the Novoshakhtinsk Oil Refinery in Russia's Rostov region.  Trump now tries to blame Zelenskyy for the high diesel prices and says "Ukraine needs a new president". He is nuts. The US needs a new president. Ukraine knows who the enemy is . Trump does not. Iran’s closest ally is Putin. Iran supplied Russia with the drone technology they are using to kill Ukraine’s civilians. Tump is out of control and a danger to his own war on Iran he started that, which caused the diesel price spike in the first place

.Key Details

• Timing: The overnight drone attack occurred on October 9–10, 2026.

• Context: The strike happened just hours after US President Donald Trump announced a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin allowing Russia to supply over 300,000 tons of diesel fuel to the US

What the heck is going on here?  The view by a centrist publication, Der Spiegel in Germany, of the US was not only expressing fear of fascism (currently a similarly approved term as the far-right) rising again there, but  it has a brutal view that it has already risen in the US.. From their recent English-language Substack: ""Compared to the situation in the United States, the far right has not made significant inroads in Germany. .... In the US, by contrast, Trump holds the most powerful office in the world – for a second time. He is surrounded by a nationalist circle of advisers, backed by majorities in both chambers of Congress, supported by paramilitary police units, and secure in the knowledge that three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court were chosen by him." 

Update from my FB post: 10/17/26 More on Trump’s alliance with Putin. He has gone rogue for sure in his support of an enemy of America’s national security. Sorry for the paywall, but the gist is to give Russia the ability to sell more gas to Europe and destroy the sanctions in place now. This would enable Russia, as part of a peace plan favoring Russia, to end the Ukraine war on their terms to get control of Ukraine and destabilize Europe.it is one more sign that Trump is now 100 percent in cahoots with Russia..Iran’s most powerful ally. The only power to stop this madness is the Senate.If your Senator is on the ballot, ask each on whose side they are on anyway? https://www.nytimes.com/.../poli.../russia-gas-trump.html...

Continuing with original post.

It is bad enough that Trump has spent the past two years subverting and purging the federal government, the "deep state" of capable civil servants and military, and replacing them only with those who pledge loyalty to him.   His foreign policy has clearly favored the bad actors of the world, the dictators, mostly communists or former communists, whom Trump so openly admires, making it clear he also supports anti-democratic forces elsewhere.  A red carpet for XI and his failure to give Ukraine help are glaring examples. At home,  he is threatening regularly to use the military or ICE to "police" voting in the midterms and to grab as much federal (Trump) control of who and how gets to vote..He has spent the past two years subverting our election system by supporting political gerrymandering and constantly attempting to wrest control of elections from the states he fears lean purple or blue.

Whose side is he on, anyway?  It certainly is not pro-democracy at home or abroad.

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https://www.ajc.org/news/what-is-germanys-afd-and-what-does-its-rise-mean-for-jews

per Google AI: The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is not officially classified as a neo-Nazi party, though German domestic intelligence and courts have formally categorized parts of it—and at times the party as a whole—as right-wing extremist or anti-constitutional. [1, 2, 3]https://www.google.com/search?q=recent+rise+of+neo+fascist+parties+in+europe&oq=recent+rise+of+neo+fascist+parties+in+europe&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRifBdIBCjI0MzUwajBqMTWoAgiwAgHxBYt3eWoP5eg08QWLd3lqD-XoNA&sourceid=chrome&source=chrome.rb&ie=UTF-8

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2026/09/once-us-was-model-to-world-of-how.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/16/us/politics/trump-election-security-cisa.html

https://thehill.com/policy/international/6074993-afd-wins-german-election-elon-musk/

From Google AI 

Milorad Dodik's pro-Russia Alliance of Independent Social Democrats claimed a decisive victory in Bosnia's October 4, 2026 local and entity elections, publicly crediting U.S. President Donald Trump's return to power and Russian President Vladimir Putin's support for the win. [1, 2]

Key Details of the Election and Speech

The Leader & Party: Bosnian Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik—who was previously banned from holding political office and was not on the ballot—led the victory celebration for his party, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). [1, 2]
The Trump and Putin Credit: In his victory speech in Banja Luka, Dodik stated that thanks to the "new environment" and U.S. leadership under Donald Trump alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin, his political movement survived rather than becoming "political corpses".

Once the US was a model to the world of how democracies should work;. No more.

Something popped up today on a publication I follow to get a sense of how others see us, and it was jaw-dropping. I follow Germany very closely because I see it as key in upholding democracy and stability in Europe, where much of my family lives. Der Spiegel is a centrist news magazine in the tradition of Time or Newsweek, and it posts selected articles and opinions on an English-language Substack.  The Germans have just had a shock with a far right political party, AfD, winning elections in the state of Saxony. Does that mean in Germany the far-right is rising? What to do, what to do? The US was once the model of how democracies should work, but now it is the resistance to Trump that should be the model for Germany of how to preserve democracy. 

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Until recently, and since my junior year abroad in Berlin in the late 1950's, a unified Germany had sought to construct a liberal democracy using the US as a model (though the parliamentary system differs).  Der Spiegel's editorial today was expressing fear that the rest of Germany was just hand-wringing, with no idea what to do.   The new model of how to stop this AfD march to more power was, brace yourself- the resistance to Trump in the USA, and in particular, the immediate reaction of his banning reporters from CNN, MSNBC, and Politico, followed by the boycott of other media in solidarity to even cover the White House.   (Update: last night the judge reviewing the suit filed against Trump by the banned networks temporarily restored their press passes.)

 The  Der Spiegel opinion piece was a shocker to me, too, that  Trump was even viewed in the same category as the AfD, and that instead of the government of the US being the role model for how democracy should be run and act, it was the USA's local grassroots resistance movement to Trump and his policies that was now a model. If anyone understands "far right" and/or fascism, it is Germany.  There is a great fear among many there of its resurgence..

How does Derr Spiegel see Trump and his regime in the US?  "Compared to the situation in the United States, the far right has not made significant inroads in Germany. .... In the US, by contrast, Trump holds the most powerful office in the world – for a second time. He is surrounded by a nationalist circle of advisers, backed by majorities in both chambers of Congress, supported by paramilitary police units, and secure in the knowledge that three of the nine justices on the Supreme Court were chosen by him."  That is a brutal view, but not incorrect.

The  Der Spiegel opinion piece was inspired by examples of US resistance, such as the immediate boycott by unbanned White House reporters also refusing to cover the White House media pool when Trump attempted to ban CNN, MSNow, and Politico, because he did not like how they reported his news.  Also cited as examples of resistance in the US were the local nature of the anti-AI data centers, the Minneapolis grassroots action against ICE, and more.  Der Spiegel urged those in Germany who feared the AfD to go and do likewise. 

I might add that NO Kings Day on Oct. 17 is an opportunity for those in Germany to see how peaceful resistance is done, and to add their moral support to the "resistance' in the US

.https://derspiegel.substack.com/

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/alternative-germany-afd-party-what-you-need-know

https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2026/10/how-no-kings-affordability-anger.html