The United States has meddled for decades in elections around the world. But no modern president has done so as brazenly as Donald Trump.

Forget shady CIA-hatched plots or surreptitious media campaigns. Trump has openly called on other countries' electorates to vote for his right-wing friends, often deploying his favorite tool of social media.

Most recently, Trump on his Truth Social platform endorsed Honduran right-wing candidate Nasry Asfura as "the only real friend of Freedom" and vowed to work with him. Asfura held a narrow lead after voting Sunday.

"I cannot think of a time when a US president was willing to just openly state his preferences in foreign elections in this way, at least in modern history," said Thomas Carothers, director of the democracy, conflict and governance program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Trump has felt especially emboldened in Latin America, where the United States has long intervened.

Trump's secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has belittled Colombia's elected left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, as a "lunatic," and imposed sanctions on a........

© Al Monitor