WASHINGTON—Donald Trump’s campaign can sound like a never-ending parade of insults.

Illegal immigrants from Mexico: “rapists.” Senator John McCain: “dummy.” Mixed martial arts champion Ronda Rousey: “Not a nice person.” Actor Samuel L. Jackson: “Not athletic.”

It is not all negativity, though. Trump will have you know that he really likes Tom Brady and Elton John. And there is another group of people he can’t stop complimenting: non-democratic world leaders.

To other Republican presidential candidates, authoritarian Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “bully” or a “thug.” To Trump, he is a “strong leader,” a “man so highly respected within his own country and beyond.”

China’s Communist officials, Trump says, are “much smarter” than American leaders. “That doesn’t make me dislike them,” he says, “it makes me respect them.”

On Saturday, Trump appeared at a rally in Iowa. After all the usual — a prolonged recitation of his poll numbers, a dismissal of the importance of climate change, a warning about Muslims — he got to talking about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s violent consolidation of power.

His first sentence was, by Trump standards, conventional: “If you look at North Korea, this guy, he’s like a maniac.”

And then . . . he praised the maniac.

“You’ve got to give him credit. How many young guys — he was like 26 or 25 when his father died — take over these tough generals, and all of a sudden — you know, it’s pretty amazing when you think of it. How does he do that?”

Trump answered his semi-rhetorical question: Kim, who was actually 28 when his father died, does that through executions.

“Even though it is a culture, and it’s a cultural thing, he goes in, he takes over, he’s the boss. It’s incredible,” Trump said. “He wiped out the uncle, he wiped out this one, that one. This guy doesn’t play games and we can’t play games with him. Because he really does have missiles and he really does have nukes.”

Coupled with his demonization of Muslims, Trump’s praise for the world’s strongmen has some observers branding him a fascist. Experts on fascism say that is too strong. Trump doesn’t reject democracy or advocate violence. And Stanley Payne, an American historian and a prominent expert on European fascism, says Trump has too vague a policy program to be called anything other than a populist, at least for now.

“The European movements, the fascist movements, they all had programs,” Payne said in an interview on Saturday. “In these movements, they all invoked pretty much explicitly authoritarian politics. And as far as I know, Trump has no program that does that. He likes to wrap himself in the American flag. Well, this is not an authoritarian or a fascist flag. What would he really do? Lord knows. He has no track record.”

It is possible that Trump’s admiring words for Putin and Kim reveal his true fascistic desires. It is equally possible he’s making up opinions on the fly. More likely, America’s most famous self-marketer is using them to emphasize his own brand attributes.

Trump, a hot-tempered billionaire who is neither especially charming or relatable, has designed a campaign message intended to minimize his weaknesses. The theme: in a world populated by strongmen, this is no time for Americans to elect a feeble nice-guy leader. When Trump hails Putin for his “strength” or praises China’s cunning, he is at once reinforcing his attack on “weak” U.S. President Barack Obama and suggesting that only an unconventionally ruthless president is qualified for a ruthless world.

Trump does best with voters who feel anxious about their security and their future. By flattering America’s geopolitical adversaries as wily supermen, Trump can heighten their fears. And, crucially, he can make the central selling point of his campaign — that he, wily superman, can single-handedly fix the United States — seem more plausible. If young Kim can quickly take control of his country, why can’t the mighty Trump quickly take control of his?

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“Trump’s entire case,” wrote David Harsanyi in the conservative National Review in December, “is propelled by the notion that a single (self-identified) competent, a strong-willed president, without any perceptible deference to the foundational ideals of the nation, will be able to smash any cultural or political obstacles standing in the way of making America Great Again.”

Trump held a second Iowa rally on Saturday. He didn’t repeat his praise of Putin. He did say this: “We’re like the big fat bully that gets his ass kicked all the time.” And then he made his regular promise about the glorious Trump era to come: “We’re going to have respect.” Just like Russia.

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