Former advisers of Donald Trump are sounding the alarm about the ex-president’s praise of autocrats in private, which CNN reports included him saying that Adolf Hitler “did some good things” and that North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is “an OK guy.” The advisers reportedly added that Trump praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in private as often as he’s done publicly, and that he called Chinese President Xi Jinping “brilliant.” The most recent instance of Trump praising world leaders behind closed doors came Friday, when he spoke highly of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a notorious strongman, while hosting him at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida. Some of his ex-advisers told CNN that Trump’s love for some of the world’s most dangerous despots—both current and old—stems from his desire to have more centralized power in the U.S. “He views himself as a big guy,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser under Trump, told CNN. “He likes dealing with other big guys, and big guys like (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan in Turkey get to put people in jail and you don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. He kind of likes that.”
