Mobutu and Trump: The Great Dictators

by Veritas Fulgens

“Nothing in excess.”
Maxim in the Temple of Apollo

Donald Trump admires the dictators who rule in Russia, North Korea, Turkey and Hungary, and envies their absolute power.  But the perfect template for Trump’s oppressive regime is the Congolese dictator Sese Seko Mobutu (1930-97).  Two brilliant books—V. S. Naipaul’s novel A Bend in the River (1979) and Michela Wrong’s grim history In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobuto’s Congo (2001)—describe Mobutu’s character and career.  The parallels with Trump are absolutely clear.  Willful, erratic and corrupt, constantly in search of revenge, Trump is our present-day Mobutu.

Mobutu combined the extravagance of the Emperor Tiberias with the evil practices of Machiavelli, who believed “it is better for a leader to be feared than loved by his subjects.”  Mobutu killed his enemies; Trump uses the FBI and the Justice Department to persecute innocent victims who opposed him.  Mobutu, a megalomaniac desperate for flattery, applause and adulation, was clever and ruthless, charming and brutal.  A professional barber dyed his hair, and he used theatrical props to create his image: leopard skin caps, royal scepters and thick glasses.  Trump always appears, as if on stage, with orange make-up pasted on his face, his hair dyed, freeze-sprayed and cantilevered to hide his baldness.  A cosmetic mortician needs a full hour to rejuvenate him.

Exercising presidential droit de seigneur, Mobutu had the right to take any woman.  He pleasured himself with twin sisters as his wife and mistress, and scattered his image into 17 children.  Trump was involved in many sexual scandals, most notably with Jeffrey Epstein.  He escaped a rape charge but was convicted of sexual abuse, and publicly boasted that he was free to grab any woman he wanted.

Mobutu had personal charisma and an instinctive feel for the masses, the ability to command attention, the gift for grand gesture and stylish bravado.  He had the panache of an entertaining actor and was good at putting on a show.  His speeches were full of inconsistencies and gossip; he spoke nonsense but the people believed him.  He told the most shameless lies without pausing for breath.  He would cajole, threaten and browbeat, and “got away with the most outrageous behavior.”  He put his name on everything, and flooded billboards and radio with self-promoting propaganda.  He demanded daily coverage in newspapers and television, and was endlessly filmed and photographed, just as  Trump bombards his followers with a tsunami of lying and self-aggrandizement on Truth Social and Fox News.  Sheer trumpery!

Mobutu thought it was morally acceptable to live like a king while his subjects starved.  He had and could satisfy an insatiable desire for money and property.  He was “branded as one of the greediest heads of state of all time,” just as Trump is certainly the greediest president in history.  Mobutu’s corruption was pandemic, he urged his followers to extort money and turned embezzlement into a presidential art.  Notorious for corruption and nepotism, he amassed through economic exploitation a secret fortune of between $50 million and $5 billion while the average annual income was $120.

Mobutu loved excess and extravagant spending.  He chartered Concorde planes for lavish shopping trips to Paris and to take his family to Disneyland.  He owned a luxurious yacht, mansions in Brussels and Paris, a villa in Monte Carlo and a chalet in Switzerland.  In Gbadolite, his remote native village at the northernmost bend of the Congo River, convenient for a hasty escape over the border to the Central African Republic, he built a monstrous gold and marble palace, “Versailles in the Equatorial Jungle,” lubricated with 15,000  bottles of pink champagne. His vulgarity and bad taste surpassed Elvis Presley’s Graceland and Michael Jackson’s Neverland.  Mobutu would fly to Gbadolite “four or five times a year, his 100-member entourage piling into three aircraft.”  He owned a fleet of Mercedes Benz limousines that used to speed on deteriorating roads between his African palaces.  His drivers blasted their horns and the frightened peasants either jumped out of the way or were hit and left like roadkill.

Trump also lives like a Renaissance king.  He has a gold-filled office in the White House and has destroyed the East Wing to satisfy his folie de grandeur.  He has lavish residences in Trump Tower in New York and Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and owns 15 golf courses in America, Scotland, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates.  He flies on Air Force One for frequent weekend golf trips to Florida that cost a million dollars each time for his planes, helicopters, entourage and security.  He accepted the gift of a luxury plane from Qatar that will cost millions to transform into secure transport.  Both dictators are “bloated by good living and corroded by distrust.”

Mobutu seized power by a military coup, deposed the democratic government of Patrice Lumumba and became the archetypal African dictator.  Defeated in the 2020 election, Trump tried to take power by instigating the January 6, 2021 coup on the U.S. Capitol.  (Mobutu was an army colonel who showed courage in battle. Trump soared from draft dodger to commander-in-chief.)  Mobutu trusted, enriched and protected his own family and tribe.  Trump’s family have made millions in secret deals throughout the world.  One dictator had an armed presidential guard, the other has an armed secret service.

When Mobutu seized control he’d never held office and had no experience in government.  He broke all laws to acquire power, plundered the country’s natural resources and created a kleptocracy, a government by theft.  Massive extortion financed his love of excess and sumptuous spending.  Like a gangster boss he rewarded his followers and created an elite who once had nothing and now owed everything to him.  He had many secret and still undiscovered presidential accounts in foreign banks.  He impoverished the country and printed worthless currency with his face on the banknotes.  Trump treats the presidency like a business and peddles souvenirs and crypto-currency.  Mobutu crushed poor people, enriched his followers and “sucked the lifeblood from his own citizens.”  Trump takes away food stamps and Medicaid from poor people, and has withdrawn crucial aid to starving and disease-stricken people throughout the world.

Mobutu created, fear, vulnerability and hopelessness in his people, and deliberately destroyed his country in order to concentrate his power.  He had strong supporters and weak opponents, steeped in centuries of passivity.  He stirred up hatred for political gains and sent troops into cities to terrorize civilians.  He was “concerned only with what would keep him in power and allow him to make money.”  He furiously attacked his enemies and exclaimed: “One has to strike through with a spectacular example, and create conditions of regime discipline.”  Unopposed by Congress and encouraged by the Supreme Court, Trump has seized control of the federal government and become a virtual dictator.  He forced 200,000 government employees to lose their jobs.  Mobutu tried unsuccessfully to have himself named president for life; Trump is openly plotting to defy the Constitution and remain in office for a third term.

In a sentence that could easily describe Trump’s cabinet appointments, Michela Wrong states that with Mobutu “experience and professionalism were regarded as irrelevant when it came to doling out top jobs.”  Mobutu valued personal loyalty over expertise and hired unqualified nonentities.  Aides told him only what he wanted to hear and cut him off from reality.  If subordinates questioned his orders or dared to disobey, they were immediately fired.  Trump also fired officials who’d opposed him and replaced them with loyal sycophants who destroyed their own departments.  He no longer bothers to appoint qualified people.

Mobutu blamed others for his own mistakes and specialized in Orwellian rewriting of history.  Trump notably vaporized his own sexual crimes and election loss.  Mobutu’s aides complained that he couldn’t focus on pressing problems and “it was difficult to discuss urgent and sensitive issues in depth.”  He knew how to get and spend money, but had no knowledge of or interest in economics.  Trump doesn’t understand tariffs.  He broke international treaties and had disastrous relations with other countries.  All this sounds like the regime of the American president.

The most depressing aspect of Trump’s horrors is that all the supposedly moral and upright Republican senators and members of Congress admire and even respect Trump despite his obvious faults.  They stand by silently while he enriches himself, breaks the law and ruins the country.  Betraying their oath of office and moral values, they support his dictatorial policies, no matter how immoral, cruel and destructive, in order to enrich themselves and stay in power.

Ignoring all court rulings against him, Trump has never been punished for any of his transgressions: from early cheating in college and avoiding the draft through two impeachments to sexual outrages and criminal convictions.  He escaped prison by taking control of the government and seems invulnerable.  The Supreme Court granted him absolute immunity from criminal prosecution and he famously exclaimed, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”  Despite acquiring vast possessions, his rapacity is never sated. As Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 73, the megalomaniac is in danger of being “Consumed with that which [he] was nourished by.”  The inexorable medieval wheel of fortune, symbol of the capricious nature of fate, turns inexorably and drives great men from kingly heights to disastrous defeats.