Like many other mainstream political commentators, Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum is outraged and indignant over Donald Trump's public praise and open embrace of foreign dictators who are allied or friendly with the US government. In an op-ed in the Post's Sunday edition entitled "How Trump Makes Dictators Stronger," Applebaum argues that Trump's words and actions constitute a "paradigm shift" for the United States because they are now, she asserts, going to solidify pro-US dictators, justify their brutality, and reinforce their power.

That's sheer nonsense. It's not Trump's words or actions that are solidifying and reinforcing the brutal, tyrannical rule of these regimes. It is US foreign aid — money and weaponry — that does that. Trump's words and actions simply confirm the truth.

As I pointed out in last week's article entitled "The National-Security State's Tradition of Embracing Dictators," the US government has been providing cash and weaponry to dictatorial regimes ever since the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II.

What is the purpose of such aid, which naturally comes from US taxpayers, compliments of the IRS? To help those pro-US dictatorial regimes maintain their power over their citizenry in exchange for their loyalty to the US government. The US-provided money funds the troops, intelligence agents, police, jails, and torture centers that enable the dictatorships to retain power over their citizenry. The US-provided weaponry provides the pro-US regimes with the ability to kill people who dissent or object or to take them into custody for punishment, indoctrination, torture, or execution. There is also the training that US national-security state officials provide to their counterparts in such dictatorial regimes. The School of the Americas, also known as the School of Assassins, comes to mind.

Applebaum, for example, laments Trump's praise for and embrace of Egypt's "brutal dictator," Abdel Fatah al-Sissi. She points out that "Sissi has arrested tens of thousands of people, many of them tortured, many of them imprisoned for the 'crime' of running independent charities or organizations."

Yet, she fails to mention something important: The US government has been providing armaments to the Egyptian military dictatorship for decades, including today. The US-provided tanks, guns, and bullets have enabled al-Sissi and his predecessors to arrest people who object to their dictatorship and jail, torture, and kill them.

While the US government provides cash and weaponry to pro-US dictatorial regimes, the president is expected to publicly maintain the façade that America stands for democracy and human rights. That way, the American people will continue to feel good about their government while the national-security establishment continues to engage in its dark-side activities.

This charade naturally entails the president being the nation's liar in chief. For example, in 1960 the Pentagon and the CIA were spying on Russia by sending a U-2 spy plane over the country. The flight was secret and illegal. The Soviets, however, discovered it and shot down the plane.

The Pentagon and the CIA prevailed on President Eisenhower to become a liar-in-chief. Ike announced to the world that the flight was not a spy plane. Eisenhower's ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, angrily denied to the world body that it was a spy plane.

Ike, the Pentagon, and the CIA were certain that their lie would not be uncovered because the Pentagon and the CIA had provided the U-2 pilot, Francis Gary Powers, with a suicide capsule that he was expected to swallow rather than let himself be captured and be forced to disclose national-security secrets to the "enemy."

Unbeknownst to Ike, the Pentagon, and the CIA, however, Powers had decided that he wasn't ready to die for the national-security state and its secrets. He parachuted out of the plane and was secretly taken into custody by Soviet national-security state officials. After Ike, Stevenson, and the US national-security establishment angrily and indignantly denied that the US government was illegally spying on Russia, the Soviet communists presented Powers to the world. He refused to lie about his mission, and his revelations disclosed that the US president and his national-security team were the liars.

While Ike was still president, the CIA came up with a plan for regime-change in Cuba that entailed an invasion of the island by CIA-trained Cuban exiles. Since the plan wasn't ready for execution by the time Eisenhower left office, the CIA presented the plan to the newly elected president, John F. Kennedy. The plan called for the United States to falsely deny that it was involved in the operation. Kennedy's job, therefore, was to become the nation's liar-in-chief shortly after he became president. He was supposed to lie to the American people and the world about the US government's involvement in the operation.

Even before those two episodes, lies by the national security establishment formed the basis for one of the most important cases in the history of the US Supreme Court, US v. Reynolds, where the Court in 1953 acceded to demands by the Pentagon to create a state-secrets doctrine. Ordinarily, when a democratic nation adopts such a doctrine, it is done through the legislature, presumably after public discussion and debate. Not here. US officials told the Court that the Reynolds case involved secrets that, if disclosed, would threaten "national security." The Court went along, judicially created the doctrine, and protected the secrets.