Trump launches personal attack on Fiona Hill after she likens him to Putin

Former president Donald Trump routinely told foreign heads of state and government that he deserved a “re-do” of his first two years in office and said he wanted to serve more than two terms as president, according to one of his former foreign policy advisers.

In an interview with The New York Times Magazine, ex-National Security Council director Fiona Hill said she saw Mr Trump had aspirations to be an autocrat in the mould of Russian president Vladimir Putin, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Ergodan, or Hungary’s Viktor Orban.

She recalled how he would “constantly” tell world leaders of his desire to be granted an extra two years in office, which he said was justified by his first two having been “taken away from him” by what he described as the “Russia hoax,” which was his term for the legitimate investigation into Russia’s interference on his behalf during the 2016 presidential election.

“And he’d say that he wanted more than two terms,” Ms Hill said, adding that Mr Trump “clearly meant it”.

She also told the Times Mr Trump’s ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, “openly talked about” Mr Trump wanting “the same arrangement” as Hungarian right-wing strongman Viktor Orban, in which Mr Trump “push the margins and stay in power without any checks and balances”.

Recalling watching the 6 January 2001 attack on the Capitol at home, she said she saw a “thread” between the riot and what Mr Putin had done in 2020 by changing Russia’s constitution to allow him to serve as president longer.

“This was Trump pulling a Putin,” she said.

Asked about Ms Hill’s comments, Mr Trump told the Times: “She doesn’t know the first thing she’s talking about. If she didn’t have the accent she would be nothing.”

Only one US president, Franklin Roosevelt, has spent more than two terms in the White House. Roosevelt was elected to the US presidency a total of four times, shattering the two-term tradition set by the first US president, George Washington.

In 1947 — two years after Roosevelt’s death — Congress approved the 22nd amendment to the US constitution, prohibiting any person from being elected to the presidency more than twice, or from serving more than one term if they filled more than two years of another person’s term after succeeding to the presidency.