Vera Bergengruen, national-security reporter at the Wall Street Journal, joins to discuss Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, his plans for his country, and his relationship with Trump. Bergengruen profiled Bukele for Time last year. Plus, the U.S. may abandon its support to Ukraine, Luigi Mangione was indicted on federal charges, a gunman killed two people on the campus of Florida State University, the latest from Gaza, and things other than eggs you can dye this Easter. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: Who is Nayib Bukele and why is he important in this story?
How can I return him to the United States? It's like I smuggle him into the United States or whatever. Of course, I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous.
Chapter 2: What is the nature of Nayib Bukele’s relationship with Donald Trump?
For more about the rise of Bukele and how he became one of Trump's most crucial and supportive foreign allies, I called up Vera Bergen-Gruen, a national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal who profiled Bukele for Time last year. I started by asking her to give me some background on Bukele and how his relationship with Trump initially started.
The most important thing to know, I think, about him is that he has an advertising background. He comes from a wealthy family in El Salvador and his image has been all about rebranding. He wants to rebrand himself. He wants to rebrand his country. And when he was elected, he went about that by trying to change people's perception of El Salvador.
Chapter 3: How has Bukele rebranded El Salvador and gained support from right-wing Americans?
He wanted to move away from this dangerous country that was being completely overrun by gangs. Now, when you walk into the airport, it says, you know, the land of surf, volcanoes and coffee.
And for him, one of the best ways to do that was building up this image that is very appealing to right wing Americans, to MAGA Americans, this tough on crime guy who was brave enough to take on the courts, take on his own country, take on corruption to great effect. I mean, it is very safe now. And it's been very effective at earning him a lot of allies in Trump's inner circle.
I'll just say this stat from your Peace Fair is it was kind of mind boggling. You write that Bukele has incarcerated one out of every 57 people in his country.
Correct. It's the highest incarceration rate in the world. And yet, again, it is something where he's able to say, you know, I mean, he said this at the Oval Office this week. He said, we imprisoned this many people, but we liberated millions. That's part of his message. I think we underestimate how appealing all of that is to a lot of Americans, to a lot of right-wing Americans or Republicans.
We see them echoing a lot of this, and I've said this before, but it really struck me in years of reporting on this, on how much of what Bukele is doing is kind of a MAGA fever dream. You know, he gets rid of judges. He swaps out lawmakers he doesn't like.
He's basically running a one-party state because the other party exists is just completely weakened because there isn't really a real opposition. And because there's so much popularity for his measures.
Well, what I thought was interesting also in your piece, you mentioned how some of his harshest critics, even some people within the Biden administration at the time, were kind of courting Bukele's favor. Help me understand why.
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Chapter 4: Why do some critics and even the Biden administration show support for Bukele?
You know, there's two things. Number one, he helped the U.S. solve its own problem. Because by making El Salvador safer, by allowing people to go back, you know, there was less of a migration pressure. You know, Salvadorans weren't fleeing the gangs. And, you know, the U.S. saw something that was benefiting them as they were dealing with a crisis at the border.
And for them, in many ways, a stable El Salvador, even if it was something that they would consider approximating a police state... was just not worth fighting in that particular way. And the other thing is just that he does have a real 90 plus percent approval rating. And this isn't a Vladimir Putin sham approval rating kind of thing. It's real.
I've spoken to so many people who have family members in jail who still prefer to live this way because they can live, they can work, they don't have to be worried for their lives. I think it's hard to overestimate just how horrific life under the gangs was. Mm-hmm.
Very complicated. So what do you make of the way that Bukele has been handling this storyline now of Venezuelans being deported to El Salvador by the U.S., agreeing to incarcerate them in El Salvador? I mean, what is in it for Bukele? Why strike this deal with Trump?
I think, again, if we put ourselves in his shoes, the leader of a country of 6 million people, a poor country, a country that has given him more visibility than it has ever had except for wars, basically. You know, the fact that people consider this a success story and someone who had so many human rights groups and the U.S.
itself, European countries, going after him from human rights violations for anti-democratic norms and having the world's most powerful country court him, give him the honor of one of the first Oval Office visits, constantly praise him. And it's kind of a victory lap, but he's clearly hoping to capitalize on it. And what's in it for him, he's already gotten what he wanted.
Beyond his wildest dreams, when I interviewed him last year, he could not have imagined that the US would be paying him to deport people to his own prison and then praise it and retweet his videos and, you know, which show pretty harsh treatment. It's almost like he feels like all of these countries are coming around to his model.
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Chapter 5: What are the implications of the U.S. deporting people to El Salvador under Bukele’s administration?
And not only that, but again, I mean, there's obviously a financial benefit. He's hoping to kind of become a penal colony for the U.S.
Well, so the Trump administration has been claiming that there's nothing that they can do to bring back the man who was wrongfully deported, as they have acknowledged, mistakenly deported, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who ended up in this prison in El Salvador and is still there. The administration says now they cannot do anything to bring him back.
When the Supreme Court weighed in on this earlier this week, even they said that the government's argument that the U.S. courts cannot do anything once a deportee has crossed the border is, quote, plainly wrong. And now Trump is talking about expanding this relationship, as you said, sending U.S. citizens to be incarcerated in El Salvador.
If that were to happen, which just to be clear, is illegal, what he is talking about, what are the possible options for recourse in the U.S. courts, maybe even in international courts?
That's a great question. I think it's a completely new world out there. I mean, even legal experts, they say it's technically unconstitutional, but we've never really had this happen in this particular way. The idea of deporting U.S. criminals to a foreign prison, there's a lot of questions about the long-term feasibility of this.
But in terms of what recourse there is, I think we're finding not much. You know, I think a lot of focus will be on the money that the United States is paying. So far, we know of $6 million for one year, but of course, that's going to be more if they sent more people. Where's that money coming from? Is it legal to pay a foreign country to imprison people in this way?
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Chapter 6: What legal challenges exist around Trump's defiance of the Supreme Court order?
That could be one way that lawmakers have to do that. They could also maybe hold up or try to question different kinds of foreign aid to El Salvador that is not tied to the prison. But all of this is just new. I don't think there's really a playbook for this.
Mm hmm. You know, I was struck when I was rereading your time piece, which, again, you wrote last summer before Trump had been reelected. You wrote, for Bukele's admirers, El Salvador has become a showcase for how populist authoritarianism can succeed.
And his second term will be a test of what happens to a state when its charismatic young leader has an overwhelming mandate to dismantle its democratic institutions in pursuit of security. Again, you wrote this before Trump was back in office for his second term. What do you think are the risks for other countries for the world if the U.S.
continues to legitimize the Bukele regime as it creeps toward authoritarianism?
When I wrote this last year, it was a big worry and concern in the region because we've seen Honduras and Ecuador, for example, both try to start building these mass prisons as well. They are trying to institute their own state of emergency, which basically allows them to suspend due process for people in order to put them in.
And I think what can be underestimated is in a region struggling with security issues, just again, the question is really, what do you do when something is that popular? Because it is, you know, he's broadcasting this. He's the most popular world leader on TikTok. And he has these very cinematic TikTok videos showing the harsh treatment in his prisons.
And when you look at the comments, it's comments from all over the world, from Europe to Asia, Africa, all of them are saying... We need our own Bukele in Ethiopia, in Netherlands. It is overwhelmingly positive. There's a simplicity to what Bukele is doing that is difficult to fight. Like the idea that if somebody is a violent criminal, you should just lock him up.
And if somebody is an alleged violent criminal, you should still lock him up because even if a couple of innocent people get caught in the process, it allows millions to live a safer life. And it is such a simple message that is really difficult for human rights concerns to process concerns to fight in this moment.
El Salvador is an extreme, but I think we're going to see a lot of countries just experiment with that and see where it goes.
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