In an article for Project Syndicate, Soros begins by mentioning how he lived under both Nazi and then Soviet rule in Hungary before asserting that "various forms of closed societies – from fascist dictatorships to mafia states – are on the rise."

This claim is confounded by the facts, which show that, "The share of the world population living in democracies (has) increased continuously."

Soros writes that in voting for Trump, Americans "elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president," and that his defeat of Hillary Clinton means America will be "unable to protect and promote democracy in the rest of the world" (because that policy worked so well in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya).

Soros also slams Trump's new cabinet as containing nothing other than "incompetent extremists" and "retired generals".

Explaining how he supports the European Union because it is a successful attempt at "social engineering," Soros laments the fact that the body has become "increasingly dysfunctional" and its disintegration has been accelerated, "first from Brexit, then from the election of Trump in the US, and on December 4 from Italian voters' rejection, by a wide margin, of constitutional reforms."