Transcript: El Salvador's 'jailer for hire'

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

81% : But Bukele is clearly enjoying this, and he also enjoyed his visit to the White House last week, where he appeared with Trump and was very much on message.
70% : Trump sent a public message of support to Bolsonaro at the CPAC conference, the most recent one, and contacts are still very close.
58% : Gideon Rachman Yeah, just returning briefly to the Trump connection, there was something again that Trump said that a lot of people picked up on, where he said to Bukele, well, you know, you're doing a great job, or words to that effect, and would also like you to take some of the domestic terrorists.
56% : Well, there was this identification of Bukele with the global hard right, his appearance at the CPAC political action conference, where he's been something of a star, and of course his support for cryptocurrency, which brought him into the circle of some of the same people who supported Trump.
54% : So Bolsonaro was close to Trump personally, when the two men were both in power, and the families have stayed close.
53% : Gideon Rachman People, I think, in Europe often compare Trump to European dictators, but you see him as a kind of Latin American caudillo.
52% : And Latin Americans, it's fair to say, do see in Trump the caudillo-type figure, which is such a feature of Latin American politics.
49% : But he's quite pragmatic at picking and choosing from political philosophies to find things that work for him.
48% : And of course it helped Trump because, as you mentioned earlier, Gideon, Trump had been ordered by the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the US and Bukele very helpfully said that there was no way he was going to do that.
45% : And Enrique Krauze, the great Mexican historian, compared Trump with the Tyrant Banderas, a fictional despot from a Spanish novel, and he felt he was very much the sort of caudillo figure.
44% : One can never tell with Trump, but the clear implication seemed to be that at some point American citizens might be shipped to El Salvador.
40% : The government of El Salvador has not commented publicly on Muyshondt's death, but this was a very chilling case of somebody who was part of the Bukele administration, but after making public accusations against it, was arrested and then not seen alive again.
40% : This is very much what Trump is trying to do.
40% : He's somebody who is much more small-state and about free trade, in fact, he's a free trader, not a protectionist, but ideologically in tune with Trump and keen to be close to the Trump administration.
33% : And obviously Javier Milei in Argentina, although Milei is a libertarian in a way that I don't think Trump or Bukele are.
29% : Yes, Trump was clear that some of what he called homegrown criminals would also be candidates, in his view, for deportation to Salvadorean jails, if that could be done, and told Bukele, in fact, he ought to build five more prisons like Cecot to take all these violent people and bad people.
29% : Well, Trump has already started saying something rather similar.
24% : He saw that Trump was wanting to deport migrants who had entered the US in some cases illegally, wanting to deport violent criminals and gang members, and saw an opportunity here for himself to essentially offer himself as a jailer for hire for the Trump administration.

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