Trump’s Efforts To Sway Foreign Elections Are Missing Something

President Donald Trump is many things, but he is rarely subtle. That may be a major reason that his efforts to influence foreign elections are drawing a growing global backlash — and risk making America look weak.

Let’s be honest: The U.S. has for decades overtly and covertly tried to sway foreign elections. Much of it is legal, especially if it involves mere commentary. And most administrations have relied on signaling, rather than blatant public moves.

What’s striking about Trump is not just that he’s meddling, but that he’s so brazen about it, current and former U.S. and foreign officials say. He and his team are so obvious and ham-handed that every move the U.S. makes now fuels suspicion, including, lately, the travel of its diplomats.

“They brag about it,” said one despondent Latin American diplomat.

Last month, in an unusually gutsy move, Brazil denied two State Department officials visas because it believedthe pair planned to sow doubts about the integrity of its Oct. 4 presidential election.

A Brazilian foreign ministry official told me thatState Department denials of ill intent were not believable. Brazil’s left-leaning government has watched closely as Trumpworld hasboosted the right-wing campaign of opposition candidate Flavio Bolsonaro. Brazil’s election system alsois considered top-notch by global standards. The government wasn’t going to allow potential U.S. election mischief on its soil, the official said.

“This is not funny business. This is very serious,” said the official, whom, like others, I granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. (This week, as part of a broader U.S.-Brazil diplomatic scuffle, the Trump administration revealed it had revoked the Brazilian ambassador’s visa.)

Brazil’s move follows asharp rebuttal from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over a U.S. plan to spend millions of dollars in grants to groups that promote “our common Western civilizational heritage” in Europe. Many political insiders view that as coded language appealing to far-right political parties. Merz, for one, saw the grants as a Trump election influence effort.

Mexico, meanwhile, is worried enough about U.S. election meddling that the ruling party recently pushed through a constitutional amendment to prevent it. Amid such efforts, Mexico’s influential former president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador,publicly alleged: “Some U.S. officials are plotting to weaken [the ruling party] and strengthen theright-wing opposition in Mexico with the aim of restoring a subservient, corrupt, mafia-like, and cruel government.”

Anna Kelly, a spokesperson for the White House, dismissed such allegations of widespread U.S. election meddling as “asinine,” and said that Trump “makes no secret about those he likes or supports because he is the most honest and transparent president in history.”

According to research by University of Hong Kong associate professor Dov Levin, between Jan. 1, 1946, and Dec. 31, 2014, the U.S. government conducted 128 partisan electoral interventions, 54 of those in the post-Cold War era. Levin’s methods exclude coup efforts. They do count moves such as secret funding of a particular political party or overt threats by U.S. officials that a country could lose financial assistance if a specific party wins.

But in the grand scheme, given the numerous global elections held throughout the years, it’s safe to say most U.S. presidents usually avoid getting involved.

That’s because doing so can fuel popular backlash, lead to generations of resentment and damage bilateral relations if the party the U.S. doesn’t support wins. It also makes it harder for the U.S. to complain, as Trump recently has, about outside interference in American elections.

“The president’s first responsibility is to protect the United States from foreign influence that shapes its elections, but if you do unto others, they will do unto you — certainly our adversaries will,” said Heather Conley, a former senior State Department official during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump has had mixed results in the influence game.

He promised Argentina $20 billion in financial aid if allies of the country’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, won legislative races (they did). He used social media to give his “Complete and Total Endorsement” to the right-wing candidate Abelardo De La Espriella (who won). Vice President JD Vance visited Hungary a few days before its presidential election to boost conservative incumbent and long-time Trump ally Viktor Orbán (he lost).

Trump’s approach to foreign elections is emblematic of how he handles much of his foreign policy portfolio. He makes big, showy moves, and he prizes short-term wins without weighing second- and third-order effects. (A clear example: the mess that is the Iran war.)

The problem is that when things don’t work out — especially when they don’t work out quickly — Trump, and the U.S. as a whole, look like less than a superpower.

As the moves by Brazil, Mexico and other countries also indicate, such efforts are increasingly unwelcome.

Some far-right parties in Europe have even signaled they want to distance themselves from the U.S. leader. Such parties tend to be nationalist, meaning they don’t like to be seen as relying on foreign powers, or as one far-right pol put it, succumbing to U.S. “vassalage.” Besides, polls show Trump is widely reviled overseas, especially as his tariffs and the energy-disrupting war with Iran have hurt people’s pocketbooks.

Going forward, if Trump truly wants to boost his politician friends abroad, he’d be better off adopting more subtle tactics, former U.S. officials and analysts tell me — the types of tactics that wouldn’t count in the lists compiled by Levin, the Hong Kong-based scholar.

It helps that the spectrum that runs from election “influence” to “interference” is wide, and most of it is legal in the U.S.

“You could have friendly meetings in the Oval Office with the foreign leader that you like, and Trump has done some of this, right?” Thomas Melia, a former U.S. official and a veteran of democracy promotion programs, pointed out. “They then get to go home with something like a trade deal or foreign aid or praise for something or other. You don't have to say you’re endorsing him in his next election or go to his country like JD Vance did a few days before the Hungarian vote.”

Many other presidents have carefully signaled their preferences without moves that hurt America’s interests (such as, let’s admit it, CIA coup plots).

In 2024, as the Gaza war raged, President Joe Biden and his aides were frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But they were not willing to flat-out urge Israelis to push the man out of power. Still, when Israeli politician Benny Gantz, a Netanyahu rival, visited Washington in defiance of the prime minister’s wishes, the administration went all out to welcome him. His meetings included one with Vice President Kamala Harris. It was a clear signal of unhappiness with Netanyahu.

A former State Department official offered another example of how the Trump team could better calibrate its actions: Rewrite the department grant notice that upset the German chancellor to leave out phrases such as “Western civilizational heritage.”

“Some of the language, especially if it’s going to be public, could have easily been written in a less controversial and less alarming manner,” the former official said. “A phrase like ‘Western civilization’ is a culture-war term, and it’s a reckless term in diplomacy. It’s ethnic and geographic, and we’re a global superpower, and we want to appeal to every corner of the globe.”

Instead of continuing to defund democracy promotion programs (remember USAID?), Trump could boost existing ones or create new ones.

Such programs do not support specific parties or candidates. But they help strengthen democratic processes, such as training election monitors or helping build nascent civil society. Investing in such structures could also bring about administrative changes in countries of interest to the U.S.

Maybe Trump could direct more funds to the National Endowment for Democracy to help a future democratic Iran, or Cuba — another country he’s pressuring and said he will have “the honor of taking.” (Instead, the Trump administration has tried to defund and dismantle the endowment.)

Trump and people in his orbit also should avoid creating strawmen, some analysts and officials told me. If you question, say, the viability of Brazil’s election system, you’ll hear back from any number of experts and diplomats praising its efficiency and security.

“It’s an amazing electoral system. The United States should adopt the election system in Brazil,” said James N. Green, a historian of Brazil and president of the board of directors of the Washington Brazil Office.

“It’s very robust,” affirmed the Latin American diplomat.

It is worth considering that Trump sometimes just wants to shift the parameters of the debate and reshape the thinking of many people less informed than experts and officials. Brazil’s election system may be solid, but sowing doubts about it could nonetheless damage people’s confidence. (Heck, Trump has already taken actions that analysts say undermine Americans’ confidence in the U.S. election system.)

And sometimes Trump may lash out publicly because he feels personally invested in the result.

The opposition candidate he loves in Brazil is the son of Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. The elder Bolsonaro is a Trump ally who is now serving a 27-year sentence for a coup attempt that was eerily similar to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Brazil's president is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a left-leaning leader who has clashed with Trump. Trump also tried to impose tariffs on Brazil because he was upset about Bolsonaro’s prosecution.

Countries from France to Kenya to Micronesia will hold key votes in 2027. But before that, Trump faces a more important election: this year’s U.S. midterms. Maybe other countries won’t be interfering in the American race (or maybe some will), but there will be plenty of foreigners hoping Trump’s party takes a beating.

“Very few people like it when the bully wins,” the Latin American diplomat said.