Public Art and Democracy; Why Trump Loves Xi Jinping

As always with autocrats, it's all about money and power

The new revelations about the $7.8 million Donald Trump’s business entities received from 20 foreign countries, over $5 million of that coming from Chinese government and state-controlled companies, should be at the center of Democratic messaging.

As I pointed out in this video I released a few days earlier, Trump doesn’t just hold up dictatorship in general as a model form of governance for Americans: he has repeatedly praised Communist dictators such as Xi Jinping (and post-Communists such as Vladimir Putin, who is busy putting up statues to his hero Stalin), despite marketing himself as the savior of America from…Communism and socialism.

Trump truly admires autocrats for their abilities to get away with crime —getting away with crime has been Trump’s life mission— but, as we see from the millions China has invested in him, there is another reason he is so openly admiring of Xi. And this is wholly in keeping with the autocrat’s transactional mentality: it is not about left or right, but about accumulating money and power.

The foreign payments story makes this 2017 work by artist Robin Bell, “Pay Bribes Here,” projected on the facade of Trump International Hotel, newly relevant. Here is an NPR article about Bell, and here is my spring 2021 interview with Bell on the importance of public art in protecting democratic values and denouncing corruption.

Robin Bell projection on Trump International Hotel, Washington DC, May 2017. Courtesy of Robin Bell.

If you missed this week’s essay about the role of sons-in-law in autocratic corruption operations, here it is. It covers Mussolini, Orban, Erdogan, Mobutu, and Trump.

I’m off to the airport soon, but will be back in the following days with a post about the anniversary of Jan. 6 and Biden’s speech on democracy.

Stay safe and stay lucid,

Ruth