Former President, Donald Trump reportedly asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to “help him win the 2020 election” according to an account of life inside the Trump administration by former Trump national security adviser John Bolton. 

“At the same meeting, Xi also defended China’s construction of camps housing as many as 1 million Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang — and Trump signaled his approval. According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”

Democratic Representative, Jake Auchincloss, sits on the U.S. House Select Committee on China and recently said that both Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are both hoping that former President Donald Trump will be in the White House in 2024.

“Let me be crystal clear here: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are salivating at the prospect of President Trump re-entering the White House in 2025,” Auchincloss said at Semafor’s World Economy Summit on Wednesday. 

“January 6, 2021, was Xi Jinping’s best day in office because when the United States degrades its own democracy on the world stage for people all over to witness, it undermines the power of our example,” Auchincloss said.

Republicans have moved closer and closer to publicly and unapologetically cozying up to authoritarian governments, perhaps more than ever before in U.S. history. 

And even though America has seen its share of elected leaders that have spoke out in the same manner as authoritarian rule in other countries (think Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his U.S. communism witch hunts)—no one stands out in American GOP political history quite like Sen. Robert A. Taft—dubbed, “Mr. Republican” and whose defense of the “pure” principled conservatism is still seen as the GOP iconic and unfortunately, shining example, for many of the Trump faithful. 

These ideologies are chillingly gaining momentum. 

In 1940 Taft wrote, “There is a good deal more danger of the infiltration of totalitarian ideas from the New Deal circle in Washington than there will ever be from any activities of . . . the Nazi bund.”

This quote is Taft actually comparing one of our nation’s highest ideals for working Americans, the New Deal which set into motion programs, public work projects, financial reforms and regulations of protections enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1939—as more dangerous than the infiltration of Nazi Americans in the U.S.

The Nazi Bund was a German-American Nazi organization established in 1936. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany. 

Today we are seeing and hearing chants and public displays of a return to that kind of thinking and the antisemitic rhetoric is ripe among GOP MAGA candidates that were mostly defeated in the mid-terms but are making a slow but steady comeback as the nation nears 2024. 

One member of the Arizona Jewish community described the growth of antisemitism and speeches flowing with hate-filled rhetoric from many of the GOP Arizona midterm candidates as “a tidal wave of antisemitism.”

The 64-year-old business owner told Northeast Valley News that he is deeply troubled by growing antisemitism—but worse, the apparent acceptance of it on the part of many GOP political candidates and even some elected officials.  It’s difficult to know how to respond to someone so legitimately frightened by the kind of antisemitic rhetoric and communication associated with some GOP candidates in Arizona.

The longtime member of Arizona’s Jewish community chose to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation and threats but told Northeast Valley News that he is concerned with the rampant and growing language of antisemitism.

“They have endorsed antisemitic candidates in other states, posed with and attended rallies of white nationalists, some of them are funded by conspiracy theorists or are supported by Nazi sympathizers —why are these candidates even allowed on the Az. ballot?”

The business owner recently changed his party affiliation back to what it was when he was “much younger”— after almost two decades as a registered Republican he said he wanted to “drop any affiliation with the GOP.”

While he has maintained a popular and successful small business for more than 21 years in Phoenix—he declined to go on the record with Northeast Valley News over fear of retaliation and threats.

The now criminally indicted Donald Trump is certainly not popular among most college students asked in a random poll, but both Trump and DeSantis are seen by many in the LGBTQ+ community and according to Arizona State University student, Devon Noels, “the greatest threat to our liberty, and the LGBTQ+ community, and we are just the beginning.”

In late January former President Donald Trump said in a video aired on his social media platform “Truth Social” that if he is re-elected, “he will punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care to minors and push schools to “promote positive education about the nuclear family” and “the roles of mothers and fathers”—this as part of a wide-ranging set of policies to use federal power to target transgender people.

Trump’s proposals have been met with strong opposition from LGBTQ rights and civil rights advocates pushing back against similar measures being introduced across the nation.

Gender affirming care, according to the Department of Health and Human Services “consists of an array of services that may include medical, surgical, mental health and non-medical services for transgender and non-binary people.”

Trump’s harsh stance against trans-education and services is a huge departure from his former claim of being a “friend” of the LGBTQ+ communities during his 2016 campaign for president.

Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis is also backing, promoting and implementing staunch legislation against LGBTQ+ education at the state level.

“He is in the process of dictating all educational curriculum in the state of Florida where my two siblings live,” Noels said.

Noels is involved in LGBTQ student activism at ASU and told Northeast Valley News, “I cannot believe that the people in this country would elect a dictator for president either Trump or DeSantis.” Noels also cites DeSantis’ book banning and his “erasing” of historical curriculum and asks, “Why does he want to censor truth, our history, personal educational freedom and oppress LGBTQ+ Americans?”

Noels, concerned about his siblings living in Miami, says the governor is implementing even broader legislation than his ‘Don’t Say Gay’ legislation that has aggressively targeted the LGBTQ+ communities. “We will continue to spread the hashtag #DictatorDeSantis until all American students know “who” he really is,” Noels said. “It’s growing as we speak,” Noels said referring to recent Tik Tok posts.

He is spearheading a personal campaign with information and ways to push back on legislation supported by DeSantis such as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida that targets instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms. The law is already facing intense backlash in Florida and across the U.S. over targeting the LGBTQ community.

DeSantis supports anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-gender bills, one such bill was proposed last week in Florida that would expand the controversial 2022 ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law to barring educational instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity and restrict the way both students and advisers can use “preferred” pronouns in schools.

As recent as March, during a Waco Texas rally, Trump praised both Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping as “very smart people.”

“If you saw the other day with President Xi, smart, top of his game, President Putin, smart, very smart people, standing there talking about the world order for the next 100 years,” Trump proudly told the crowd. 

The most frightening part…people at the Texas rally were vigorously applauding. 

As far as Putin and Xi Jinping are concerned, the stage is set for a possible Trump return and both nations see a Trump win as a win for them. 

A 2020 Brookings Institution forecast of a possible 2024 return of Trump to the White House reads,  “a second Trump term would make a lasting impact on the world right when it is at a particularly vulnerable moment, U.S. alliances would likely crumble, the global economy would close, and democracy and human rights would be in rapid retreat.”