Egypt’s military ruler Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was never invited to the Obama White House, where he was viewed as a brutal tyrant with little regard for human rights and democracy.

On Monday, President Donald Trump will roll out the red carpet for him.


Reviled by activists for what they call the harshest political repression in Egypt’s history, Sisi has emerged as an early Trump favorite among world leaders. The two men first met during the presidential campaign in September, leading Trump to call Sisi a “fantastic guy,” and Sisi was the first foreign leader to reach Trump after his election.

Their meeting Monday will offer important clues about how Trump plans to engage with foreign dictators with poor human rights records. It is also key to Trump's effort to bolster ties with Arab allies in the fight against Islamists across the Middle East.

While Western governments have protested Sisi’s imprisonment of thousands of people on dubious political charges, Trump has openly praised the Egyptian autocrat’s ruthlessness.

“He took control of Egypt. And he really took control of it,” Trump said in a September interview with the Fox Business Network. Sisi claimed the title of president after a June 2014 election in which his official vote total was 96.91 percent.

Trump and his advisors admire Sisi’s hard—many say brutal—stance against Islamic radicalism. The Egyptian general helped lead the overthrow of an elected Islamist Muslim Brotherhood government in July 2013, and denounces the Islamic State. Other Sisi backers in the White House include senior adviser Stephen Bannon; counter terrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka; and Derek Harvey, the National Security Council’s top Middle East official. Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also back better ties with Egypt.

But Trump’s enthusiasm for Sisi disturbs human rights and democracy advocates who worry that Trump is drawn to authoritarian rulers and tactics. Trump has called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “strong leader,” and once approvingly described the decisive force of the Chinese government’s 1990 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square.

They also see Trump’s virtually uncritical embrace of Sisi as the latest sign that he finds little use for democracy and human rights as priorities in American foreign policy.

“The larger message that I hear from the president is that he is not interested in America being a force for good in the world,” said Tom Malinowski, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor from 2014 until this year.

Trump has even implicitly rejected the very idea that the U.S. enjoys any special virtue. “When the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger,” he told the New York Times in July. Asked in a February Fox News interview whether Vladimir Putin is a “killer,” Trump replied: "There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent?"

Malinowski and others cited several recent instances where Trump officials have sidestepped or downplayed human rights.

Last month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson broke with tradition by not personally presenting his department’s annual report on human rights worldwide. In mid-March, the Trump administration declined to sign a letter condemning alleged torture practices in China that was backed by 11 other nations, including Britain, France, Germany and Canada. And Trump’s proposed cuts to the State Department budget would weaken programs designed to promote U.S. values abroad.

Last week, the State Department notified Congress that it would end conditions imposed by Obama on arms sales to Bahrain that require evidence of progress on human rights and political reform.

Taken together, those actions could portend a sea change in what America stands for on the global stage, critics say

“That’s where our influence has been,” said Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “It’s about our principles—human rights, good governance. That’s what our brand is all about.”

That part of the America brand will take a back seat with Sisi arrives at the White House Monday. On Friday a White House official told reporters that Trump would criticize Sisi’s record on human rights only “in a private, more discreet way” than past presidents.

Human rights advocates are skeptical that Trump will show much energy on the topic, which the White House official only addressed after a reporter asked about it.

A White House statement announcing Sisi’s visit last week listed only two issues—terrorism and economic reform—on the meeting agenda. Among the omissions was the case of Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian-American citizen who ran a charity for orphans until she was arrested in 2014 on what activists call bogus charges tied to her foreign nationality and interest in political reform. Pressed on her case, the White House official declined to say that Trump would raise it with Sisi.

“I see no signs in general that Trump is very concerned with human rights abuses in Egypt or their consequences,” said Stephen McInerney of the Project on Middle East Democracy. “Sisi’s approach to ruling Egypt directly undermines his ability to be an effective partner” on terrorism and economics, McInerney said.

McInerney warned that Sisi’s repression might breed more radicalism. Egypt has imprisoned thousands of young men on non-violent political charges alongside genuine extremists who might try to convert them to their cause.

But Trump has suggested in the past that brutal tactics can keep a lid on Islamic radicalism. During the 2016 campaign, he complained that U.S. interventions to topple Arab dictators who repressed their populations only unleashed terrorism.

Several key Trump advisors also believe Sisi deserves more fulsome U.S. support than he received from an Obama administration hoping to pressure him into a more open governing style.

“Why won’t President Obama talk to Egyptian President Sisi? Sisi has taken on the threat of violent, intolerant Islamic jihadism at great personal risk,” Harvey wrote on his personal blog in January 2015.

And in an April 2016 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said he was concerned that Sisi’s Egypt did not allow “legitimate political dissent.” But Mattis noted that Sisi has denounced violent radicalism that claims the mantle of Islam, and concluded “it’s time for us to support him.”

While never cutting ties with Cairo, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry sharply criticized Sisi for his government’s historic clampdown, in which hundreds of people were killed or sentenced to death. Sisi shut down NGOs and charitable groups, limited press freedoms and jailed thousands of people affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama also suspended joint military exercises with Egypt, along with a portion of the $1.3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Cairo. (The aid was eventually restored, in part because Obama concluded the punishment was not changing Sisi’s behavior.)

The official said that Trump and Sisi would “reboot” the U.S.-Egyptian relationship. During the campaign, Trump vowed in a statement that the U.S. would be “a loyal friend, not simply an ally, that Egypt can count on.”

White House officials did not respond to a request to comment for this story. But the official who briefed reporters on Friday added that human rights “are always of concern” to the U.S.

Trump officials have made some public gestures on that front. During his recent visit to China, Tillerson said that the U.S. “will continue to advocate for universal values such as human rights and religious freedom.” The State Department and White House also condemned the arrest of hundreds of political protesters in Russia last weekend. But critics call those exceptions to the rule.

Every modern president has struggled to define the relationship between values and security. Ronald Reagan celebrated freedom but backed anti-communist dictators. George W. Bush vowed to spread democracy across the Middle East but did little to discomfort undemocratic allies like Saudi Arabia. Obama spoke about dignity and civil rights but struck security deals with repressive tyrants from Iran to Uzbekistan.

The results often seemed hypocritical, and some foreign policy scholars argue that the U.S. should not adopt a pose of moral superiority. But Republicans in particular subscribe to the idea of “American exceptionalism,” and lambasted Obama for allegedly doubting it; they have said little about Trump’s apparent rejection of the notion.

Trump’s critics fear that he is undermining the image of a virtuous America, and the values it represents, just as Russia and China promote their own authoritarian vision abroad.

“You can’t promote moral values around the world if you’re constantly echoing the propaganda of our adversaries that America is not a moral country, no better than anybody else,” Malinowski said.

Anti-democratic foreign leaders like Putin, Sisi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, he added, “are delighted to have this opportunity to level the moral playing field.”