Trump’s Making Allies with All the Wrong People in All the Wrong Places

2 min readI think that, once they finish The Ballroom, they should drop all pretense and put a big onion-shaped dome on top of it. From The New York Times:James Blair and Chris LaCivita, who are leading a big-money midterm advertising campaign for the Trump political operation, spent some of the past few days in a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Republika Srpska ahead of elections there on Sunday, according to four people familiar with their travels who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Balkan work.Under the control of that party, Republika Srpska has aligned itself with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, while spending heavily to court Mr. Trump and his supporters. Mr. Trump’s allies have promoted the party’s embrace of Christian conservatism and its resistance to joining the European Union. In the run-up to Sunday’s elections, the party had warned that its hold on power could have been threatened by the debut of voting machines like those that Mr. Trump and his allies continue to falsely blame for his loss in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.In a victory speech late Sunday, Milorad Dodik, the party’s leader and until recently the autocratic president of Republika Srpska, thanked Mr. Putin for his support and credited Mr. Trump’s 2024 victory with creating a favorable political environment, according to media reports.This alliance between the administration and far-right political operations worldwide has largely fallen out of the spotlight since voters in Hungary gave White House dreamboat Viktor Orbán the boot. But it's pretty clearly still active, as demonstrated by this story, and by this curiosity out of Poland. From Notes From Poland:Media reports claim that U.S. President Donald Trump, during a previously unreported meeting earlier this year with Poland’s defense minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, suggested that he leave Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition and form a new government with the right-wing opposition. Kosiniak-Kamysz has confirmed that the meeting took place, but has not commented on what was discussed. Meanwhile, Tusk himself has said that, while he wants to “maintain discretion,” the information he received from Kosiniak-Kamysz indicates that Trump was interested in discussing the “internal situation in Poland.”Meanwhile, the government is in constant conflict with President Karol Nawrocki, who is aligned with the opposition. Nawrocki is also a close ally of Trump, who endorsed him during last year’s presidential election.By contrast, Tusk and his government have clashed with the Trump administration, though they also seek to maintain close relations with the U.S. as Poland’s most important security partner.The danger is not that world leaders laugh at him. It's that other world leaders find him useful.