'Invulnerable': Trump's threat against US ally suggests he 'feels utterly unbound'

Although President Donald Trump often attacks some of the United States' closest longtime allies — including Canada — he is quick to praise authoritarian far-right figures like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was voted out off and replaced by left-wing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Bolsonaro is under fire in Brazil for his efforts to stay in office despite losing the election.

Trump, claiming that Bolsonaro is being treated unfairly, is threatening to impose a 55 percent tariff on all Brazilian goods imported into the United States — a development that CNN's Dana Bash discussed with two reporters, Bloomberg News' Ron Brownstein and the Associated Press' Seung Min Kim, during a Thursday afternoon, July 10 broadcast.

Bash noted that Trump is calling Bolsonaro's trial a "witch hunt" and is using his "economic levers" against Brazil. And she pointed out that the U.S./Brazil relationship is far from an example of "unfair trade imbalances" — as there is a "$6.8 billion trade surplus with Brazil."

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Brownstein told Bash and Min Kim, "There are two large points you can make about this. One is that Trump is kind of running a modern version of the Comintern…. from the Soviet era, where both he and JD Vance are systematically trying to promote the prospects of far-right ethno-nationalist parties around the world: the AFD in Germany, Hungary, etc."

The Bloomberg News reporter continued, "But I think something is even bigger here, and that affects also the way Trump is governing at home — which is that this is just the latest evidence that he feels utterly unbound in his second term. That all of the constraints that limited him in any way in his first term, whether from Congress or the courts or from officials that he had to appoint within his own administration — all of that has faded away."

To illustrate his point, Brownstein referenced the recent presence of militarized law enforcement in Los Angeles' MacArthur Park.

Brownstein told Bash and Min Kim, "In L.A. earlier this week, he sent a convoy of armored vehicles and National Guard — not just ICE — heavily armed, armored National Guard into a public park in an American city. And so, I kind of look at this as a piece with that, where he basically feels there are no constraints limiting him on basically trying to bend institutions at home and abroad to his will. And generally speaking, feeling that you are invulnerable and impregnable is the predicate, I think, to overreaching as a political leader."

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