Importing the Third World

By Nick Catoggio

Monday, September 28, 2026

 

“Import the third world, become the third world” is a slogan popular with postliberals who, for whatever reason, are reluctant to say the 14 words. Publicly, anyway.

 

Like “Great Replacement theory,” it’s wormed its way into semi-“respectable” right-wing discourse to a degree that out-and-out racism still hasn’t quite managed. I doubt, for instance, that we’ll ever see the president deliver a fascist salute while shouting “white power.”

 

But “import the third world, become the third world”? Not only might Donald Trump plausibly say it, in 2024 his campaign did say it. And the visuals it chose to illustrate the point were as subtle as you’d expect.

 

“Import the third world, become the third world” is the conclusion you reach when you’ve despaired of America’s formidable ability to assimilate immigrants, as postliberals certainly have. It implies a second conclusion: To avoid becoming the third world, all you need to do is to stop importing the third world.

 

But that’s as false as false can be, in case you missed the previous thousand editions of this newsletter. Under Trump, America’s government did stop importing the third world—and immediately set about adopting every civic pathology for which third-world regimes are known and despised.

 

American postliberals have no objection to third-world government. What they want, and have always wanted, is a third-world government that works for them, privileging their own racial, religious, and ideological tribe while penalizing rival ones.

 

Which brings us to the president’s—or is it the American people’s?—new ads.

 

Three times in the past week, the White House has released videos that are indistinguishable from campaign spots. The first, which aired on Fox News and other right-wing outlets, features audio of UFC honcho Dana White celebrating Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.” Heroic images of the president flash onscreen, intercut with the words “America will never be a communist country.” A chorus sings “love me,” if you can believe it, in the background.

 

The second ad, more subdued, features Trump speaking about America’s future while romantic images of Mount Rushmore, fireworks, and crowds with flags float by. But the third is a return to form—the man in his element, glowering at the camera in black-and-white while audio plays from one of the most third-world speeches he’s ever given: “This is the final battle…. We will demolish the deep state, we will expel the warmongers…. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country…. We will liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

 

That one aired this weekend during Saturday Night Live, Fox News Sunday, and various football games. Not only does it look like a campaign ad, it was a campaign ad. It repurposes footage that Trump posted to Truth Social as a candidate in 2024—footage that, per the New York Times, his team spent upward of $60,000 to boost online in the final days of that year’s presidential race

 

Why is any of this newsworthy? Because: All three spots released this week are captioned “Paid for by the U.S. government.” That is, by you and me.

 

The White House addressed the outcry on Friday with a press release titled “Presidential Public Service Announcements Are Nothing New,” but it’s unclear what the alleged “public service” in this case is supposed to be. The historic examples the press releases cites—public health announcements, entitlement enrollment information, morale boosters during war—all had a policy rationale. The new Trump ads don’t.

 

According to the White House, the rationale is “patriotism.” What could be more patriotic than a fascist demagogue seething about cleansing America of internal enemies?

 

What’s the real purpose of these ads?

 

Because he can.

 

I’m open to the theory that there is no “purpose” per se.

 

What was the purpose of putting the president’s face on the currency? For that matter, what was the purpose of last week’s summit with Xi Jinping?

 

There’s no “purpose,” only vanity and prestige.

 

Earlier this month Axios reported that the people around Trump have largely given up on discouraging his worst impulses, particularly when those impulses involve his self-glorification. (And when don’t they?) “Many aides and confidants have been worn down,” the outlet reported. “They know they can’t stop him, and they don’t even try. More and more, they humor his whims.”

 

Perhaps the taxpayer-funded campaign ads are just the latest perk of the imperial presidency for a term-limited egomaniac, no different in substance from minting a coin in his honor. He’ll never be on the ballot again; the right’s emotional investment in him is declining and will soon enough shift to some younger successor. He intends to cling selfishly to the national spotlight for as long as he can, and the new ads are one way to do it.

 

But I think that’s too simple. If you’ve paid any attention to the president’s campaign rhetoric over the past month, you know that there is a purpose to these spots and it ain’t patriotism. Before, during, and after the spotlight-clinging convention he held a few weeks ago, Trump has begged fans to “pretend I’m on the ballot” in November. (He did it again this morning.) MAGA diehards reliably turn out for their hero in presidential elections, but much less reliably in midterm campaigns, when he’s on the sidelines. He needs them at the polls this fall to hold down congressional losses.

 

The three new ads are all designed to impress upon them the sense that the president himself is on the ballot, reminding the red cap-wearing wing of the right why they put those caps on in the first place. Trump’s own political fate might not be at stake, the commercials seem to say, but the fate of Trumpism is.

 

If you wouldn’t call ads that amplify a party’s core election message “campaign ads,” what would you call them?

 

Of course they’re campaign ads, never mind that federal law prohibits using money appropriated by Congress for political propaganda. The question is why a guy whose PAC was sitting on more than $400 million as of the end of August connived to have the U.S. government pay to air them instead of picking up the tab himself, or leaning on some private-sector crony to do so. Sticking the taxpayers with the bill feels gratuitous, seeking out controversy when it could easily have been avoided. Why would Trump do that?

 

Because he can.

 

The caption “Paid for by the U.S. government” is a sort of advertisement within an advertisement. As I said, the dream of postliberals is to be governed by a third-world regime that favors them and disfavors their enemies. The three ads are Trump’s way of reinvigorating his unenthused base by showing them the extent to which he’s achieved that. I’ve weaponized the federal government so ruthlessly against the left, he’s suggesting, that I’m going to have the U.S. Treasury pay for Republican campaign ads.

 

He might not have made groceries cheaper or weakened China or ended “forever wars” in the Middle East. But to the sort of anti-American cretin who believes that saving the country requires abusing federal power toward the goal of right-wing autocracy, he’s delivered in spades. That’s the sort of voter he needs at the polls in November and whose excitement he’s hoping to rekindle. “Forget the price of diesel,” the ads imply. “Remember the big picture here.”

 

It reminds me of Pete Hegseth commandeering Apache helicopters for him and Kid Rock to joyride around in, another memorable “because I can” postliberal moment that mimics the most loathsome aspects of third-world government. The ruling party makes no distinction between its personal interests and the national interest; high officials arrogantly flaunt their corruption, knowing that cronyism will guarantee their impunity; and the public, demoralized by the spectacle, loses confidence in liberalism’s ability to deter that corruption, which ironically feeds the opposition’s appetite for postliberal remedies.

 

All of that was true of the helicopter episode, and all of it is true of Trump’s government-funded ads. Even the “love me” chorus in the first spot turns out to have been obtained improperly, lifted from a song by an artist who didn’t authorize its use by the White House. The logic of choosing that music was “in for a penny, in for a pound,” I suppose: If the president was going to steal money from the U.S. Treasury to pay for the ads, he might as well steal intellectual property to make them to his liking too.

 

Americans imported a third-world political movement into the federal government in 2024 and now here we are. Import the third world, become the third world.

 

A game of horseshoes.

 

The most preposterous soundbite in the three ads is the audio of Trump grumbling about “expelling warmongers,” a bit of 2024 verbiage that’s aged post-Iran like milk left out on a windowsill at Mar-a-Lago. But I was also struck by how large anti-communism loomed in his message, given the fact that one of his own diplomats went on television yesterday and claimed that the president offered last week to sell weapons to … China.

 

That feels like a gag someone like me would write to satirize his infatuations with dictators and “deals,” but it’s no joke. “President Trump continues to say, ‘Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,’” David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador to China, told Fox News Sunday. “He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.”

 

Selling weapons to an enemy regime that might plausibly use them someday to kill American soldiers feels like the logical endpoint of the Trump era, which began with bluster about getting tough on China and now seems to be steering toward some sort of illiberal “grand bargain” involving joint global hegemony via the two countries’ “spheres of influence.” Never mind what the ad says: In what way is the president’s administration still meaningfully anti-communist?

 

There are two notorious communist leaders on planet Earth, Xi and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and Trump’s desire for better relations with both is so effusive that it borders on personal affection. He also appears to have been sincerely charmed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, America’s most influential next-gen socialist, and does nothing to hide it.

 

I’m not exaggerating for effect when I say that not only does Trump appear more comfortable with illiberal left-wing leaders than any modern Democratic president has been, he’s practiced socialist economics more aggressively than any modern Democratic president has. If Barack Obama or Joe Biden had sought government ownership stakes in 31 companies and counting, many grassroots right-wingers would have skipped the calls for impeachment and proceeded straight to egging on a military coup.

 

It all amounts to a second way in which Trump has “imported” the third world. Between his affinity for communist dictators, his cultivation of Arab client states, his abiding interest in rapprochement with Vladimir Putin and Russia, and his comparative hostility toward liberal powers in Europe and Canada, never before has American foreign policy held third-world forms of government in as high regard as it does now. At best, the president seems to view them as no worse than their Western counterparts. At worst, he actively prefers them.

 

It’s not his fault—or not entirely—that more than 40 percent of Americans now rate “socialism” positively, the highest share ever tracked by Gallup. That surge is a combination, I suspect, of years of loose talk on the right that foolishly made “socialism” synonymous with the welfare state (Americans love the welfare state!) and the cost of living having driven some desperate voters to give radical redistribution a second look. Trump is partly responsible for the latter, of course.

 

But I wonder if his presidency will end up durably destigmatizing third-world modes of government for younger generations. He’s governed largely by decree, has normalized Xi and Kim, has legitimized government meddling in the private sector, and is poised to reorient welfare programs around right-wing social engineering; as young Americans absorb all of it, this week’s new ads might seem even more ironically vacuous in hindsight than they already do. How could Republicans seriously campaign in 2026 on promising that “America will never be a communist country” while doing more than any other modern party to condition the public to tolerate statist autocracy?

 

The answer, I suppose, is that they’re not “seriously” campaigning on it. Terms like “communist” are substantively meaningless to the president and his fans, essentially just slurs that translate loosely to “domestic left-wing antagonist.” (That’s why, in the audio for the third ad, “communist” and “Marxist” are placed alongside “fascist” and “villains.” They’re all just empty swear words aimed at the president’s enemies.) When you hear “America will never be a communist country,” you’re not supposed to picture it being overrun by the Chinese army or under the yoke of some U.S. version of the Supreme Soviet. You’re supposed to imagine it being run by a Congress of “woke” twentysomething progressives with blue hair. Or President Jon Ossoff.

 

The essential disagreement in “horseshoe politics” doesn’t have to do with how government should operate, on which the far left and far right largely agree. It has to do with which side gets to be in charge. And, unintentionally, the three new ads illustrate that too: Insofar as their goal is to persuade Republican voters to turn out to vote and keep Congress in the GOP’s hands, they’re a plea to protect Trump’s quasi-autocratic powers by extending one-party rule in Washington. Normally the president doesn’t get to govern like a Chinese emperor just because his side happens to control the House and Senate, but in third-world America, the stakes in the midterms really are a choice between democracy and whatever the hell one might call the last 20 months.

 

You can have a communist country, i.e., one in which Democrats get to govern sometimes, or you can have the other thing, in which the attorney general mutters menacingly about media bias as a “national security issue” that Americans shouldn’t have to put up with. Having imported the third world into the government in 2024, voters will decide in November how much more of it they’d like to import.