TYRANTS IN TIARAS

Trump, 79, Fawns Over Dictators in Wild Pep Talk: ‘You’re All Stars’

The president seemed to regard the distinctly autocratic line-up of his new initiative at Davos more as beauty pageant contestants than despots.

Donald Trump appeared to slip briefly into his former role as a beauty pageant judge while addressing the decidedly authoritarian members of his “Board of Peace” in Davos on Thursday. “Everybody in this room is a star,” he told the leaders assembled on stage for the group’s signing ceremony. “There’s a reason that you’re here. And you’re all stars. You’re the biggest people, most important people in the world,” he said. The MAGA leader’s gushing comments were directed at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, regarded by many as the EU’s only autocrat, and Azerbaijan’s Ilhan Aliyev, whose government has been repeatedly accused of torture and extrajudicial killings. Other national representatives heralded from countries with similarly abysmal human rights records, like Belarus, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan. Traditional U.S. partners have largely scorned Trump’s new peace initiative, the credibility of which has struggled under the weight of Trump’s threats of a trade war with Europe and push to acquire Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark. For the most part, the president appears unfazed by the more autocratic credentials of his new political bedfellows, however. “Sometimes you need a dictator,” he told Davos attendees Wednesday.

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