Trump’s response to a positive coronavirus test is an attempted Kremlinisation of the US

Parallels are perilous. It is easy to over-extrapolate similarities, but the determination of Donald Trump to portray himself as strong in the face of physical weakness is redolent of Soviet and post-Soviet occupants of the Kremlin – and of the steely determination of the system to portray its leaders as strongmen, when, both physically and mentally, they were anything but.

The problem, of course, for President Trump is that US democracy, however challenged it is today, was designed and has thrived on its ability to check strongman politics. The separation of powers, for example, means that legislative and judicial authority, at least in theory, are independent from the executive. This is an essential starting point for democracy in America. 

Relatively few Russian leaders can be considered pictures of health: Nikita Khrushchev was obese, Leonid Brezhnev was effectively comatose for the last 10 years of his 18-year reign, Yury Andropov died 15 months into the job, Konstantin Chernenko then managed just 13. Things got better with Gorbachev, now in his 90th year, before they got worse again with Boris Yeltsin whose health (read: drinking) problems were well known and who suffered a massive heart attack in his 1996 re-election campaign from which he never truly recovered.

In the USSR, you only really knew something was seriously amiss when Swan Lake suddenly appeared on television.

The commonality is the portrayal of strength even when leaders have been at their weakest physically but the very sharp difference is the time lag between the illness, the dawning of public awareness and the confirmation of the real truth of things.

Within hours of the announcement that President Trump had checked in to Walter Reed Medical Center, a raft of medical doctors, virologists and public health experts took to the media to evaluate the likely origins and trajectory of his infection, and also its impact on the myriad staff and supporters who he had come into contact with. In a country where the news media is polarised, but independent, this is difficult to hide. Leadership styles are only as significant as the political system that supports them will allow.

The current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is keener than any of his predecessors to be seen as the very paragon of macho strength (although it is also notable that both Putin and Trump are famous teetotallers). Putin’s approach to epidemiological security is by far the tighter of the two, though. Since his prime minister and press spokesperson contracted coronavirus, he has been holed up in his presidential country residence, complete with dedicated “disinfection tunnel”.

President Trump, like Soviet and contemporary Russia, seems convinced that the people “cannot handle the truth” when it comes to their leaders’ frailties. In one sense, he may be right. Americans wish the President and his family well, but the polls suggest that this does not translate into active support. An anxious electorate already unsettled by the twin health and economic crises, are losing confidence in the President. With the election only four weeks away, Vice President Biden’s lead on the President has climbed since President Trump became sick and he now leads by an average of 8.9 per cent across national polls.

The distorted optics of personal Presidential strength also seems to have little effect on the ability to deal with crises such as Covid. Russia is heading into a severe second spike with 11,615 new cases reported on Tuesday – almost as severe as the May peak. And with 4 per cent of the world’s population, the United States has 20 per cent of the world’s Covid-19 deaths, the spread of the virus continues to accelerate in at least 15 states, millions of children in the United States are learning from home, but 14 per cent of children in the US aged three to 18 don’t have internet access.

The grossly unequal impacts of the pandemic on America’s racial minorities, and the impact of the economic crisis on young people and low-income workers, stands in stark contrast to the treatment the President has received, another fact that is harder for the world’s leading democracy to hide.

Now, though, the virus has struck the White House, with many in the White House either sick, or working from home, three Republican Senators sick with Covid-19, and even President Trump’s campaign manager quarantining with the virus.

This latest similarity of style in managing information attests to an attempted Kremlinisation of the US under Trump: feudalism, secrecy, the evisceration of institutions and checks and balances by appointing cronies and lapdogs to neutralise them and the absence of trust in anything the spokespersons say – resulting in inevitable speculation on his real state of health.

The lines between governing the country and owning it (plus taking any opportunity for personal enrichment) are blurred. But democracy is at work in the United States. As Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

James Nixey is director of the Russia-Eurasia and Europe programmes at Chatham House

Dr Leslie Vinjamuri is director, of the US and the Americas programme at Chatham House