Julian Assange and Glen Greenwald are hardly members of the far right, and yet they have consistently defended Donald Trump. Why?
Because they are the exact opposite of neo-conservatives: they believe that America is exceptional in that it is a force for evil throughout the world. Conceived in slavery, imperialism, and sin, America brings death and disorder everywhere it goes in the name of supposed universal values that it uses purely as a cover for material interests. Sure, Putin might be a thug, and his regime might be a kleptocracy, but his imperialism is more restrained than America’s, and he doesn’t try to convince the world that he’s high-minded. He may be evil, but he’s the lesser evil.
Jeremy Corbyn would agree with all of this, and Bernie Sanders probably does, too, although he is unlikely to say so directly in public.
To these folks, there are two things to commend Trump. First, he’s given no indication that he’s a warmonger; he prefers negotiations and economic sanctions to military interventions–at least so far. Second, Trump doesn’t believe in American exceptionalism; to the far left, his absurdly anachronistic version of colonialism and mercantilism isn’t an aberration–it actually is what America does in practice. Trump, in their eyes, speaks for the real America, not the self-deluded one; he’s a truth-teller who exposes the hypocrisy of the establishment by his open preference for economic interests and dictators over liberal democratic values. As such, he is a breath of fresh air, not a menace to be opposed wherever possible.