People the Duce admires

Strongmen steamroll opposition, all over the world.

The list is long and their contempt for law and republican constitutional order is egregious.

Across the world, autocratic leaders are engaging in increasingly brazen behavior — rigging votes, muzzling the press and persecuting opponents — as they dispense with even a fig leaf of democratic practice once offered to placate the United States or gain international legitimacy.

The global tide is driven by a bewildering range of factors, including the surge of populism in Europe, waves of migration and economic inequality. 

And leaders of countries like Egypt, which had long been sensitive to Washington’s influence, know they run little risk of rebuke from an American president who has largely abandoned human rights and the promotion of democracy in favor of his narrow “America First” agenda.

In Cambodia, Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has ruled the country for 33 years, has led a sweeping crackdown on opponents before elections this summer. 

In November, Mr. Trump flashed a big thumbs-up as he posed for a photo with Mr. Hun Sen, who later praised the American president for what he called his lack of interest in human rights.

In Honduras, President Juan Orlando Hernández was inaugurated for a second term on Saturday amid uproar from opposition figures who accused him of rigging the vote, and despite calls for a new election from the Organization of American States. 

Washington ignored the O.A.S. findings, with the American chargé d’affaires offering only tepid statements calling on all sides to behave peacefully.

And the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, who once was forced to surrender power for four years to respect his Constitution, has barred the main opposition challenger in the March election, virtually assuring that he will win a fourth term. 

Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed his desires for closer ties with Mr. Putin.

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Mr. Trump’s priorities are further underscored by his failure to appoint an assistant secretary of state for human rights, and by Mr. Tillerson’s unusual snubbing last year of the presentation for the release of the State Department’s annual report on global human rights.