In February El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele was greeted with a standing ovation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) after his landslide reelection victory. One of the audience members tried to talk to him by walking up to the stage and shouting, “You are a true leader,” ignoring the cheers and chants of “We love you.” dad.”
He warned the CPAC crowd: “The forces of darkness are already taking over your country. You may not see it yet, but it is already happening.”
Bukele, who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator,” The “philosopher king” is beloved by American conservatives for his iron fist and crackdown on crime and gangs. After visiting El Salvador in 2023, Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) praised Bukele and the United States as a “bright spot” in the region. And last month, Tucker Carlson attended Bukele’s inauguration, along with Rep. Matt Gates (R-Florida), Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Donald Trump Jr.
“Naive Bukele locks up gangsters, kicks out corrupt judges, accepts God without excuses, and denounces globalization with facts and results,” Gaetz posted on X. “He is a man beloved by his people and an inspiration to the Western world.”
But perhaps all this flattery is too much for another leader who can’t do conservatives wrong. In his final speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Donald Trump unexpectedly attacked Bukele, with whom he had a friendly relationship while in office.
Trump has repeated racist rants about an “invasion” at the border, saying crime rates in the U.S. are rising because certain countries are “bringing criminals here and sending them here.”
Without mentioning Bukele directly, Trump explained, “In some countries, I happen to like the president of that country very much, but he gets a lot of publicity because he’s a great shepherd of that country,” and then added, “He talks about how good that country is because the crime rate is low. And he says he’s training all these tough guys… But I realized he’s not training them. He’s sending all the criminals, the drug dealers, the people in prison, to the United States. And the difference is that he doesn’t say that.”
Trump hit harder. “He’s trying to convince everyone what a great job he’s doing running the country. Well, he’s not doing a great job,” he said, adding that he followed up his criticism of Bukele with a new pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.”
In what appeared to be a response to Trump’s speech, Bukele posted on X, “Take the highway.”
It goes without saying that Trump’s claim that El Salvador is “exporting” criminals to the United States is false. But it is true that Bukele succeeded in reducing the crime rate in a country once known as the murder capital of the world. He did so by enacting a “state of exception,” indiscriminately arresting thousands of people in defiance of due process, and silencing the press while international organizations condemned widespread human rights abuses that were worse than those during the country’s civil war.
Whether Trump’s remarks reflect a threat to his ego or something else, they likely reveal diplomatic myopia. If re-elected in November, the GOP candidate and his future administration will have no choice but to work with the Salvadoran president on some of the issues Trump and his party claim to care about, most notably migration and drug trafficking.
President Trump made agreements with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to require asylum seekers to seek protection in those countries before coming to the U.S. The Biden administration has since withdrawn from the so-called “safe third country” agreements. If he wants to continue this cooperation as president, it’s a strange way for Trump to say this.
