Javier Milei Is Not Donald Trump

Javier Milei won the presidency in Argentina, and the media can’t stop talking about Donald Trump. Business Insider called Milei “Argentina’s Trump-like presidential candidate.” The Daily Beast called him the “‘Donald Trump’ of Argentina.” A common formulation used in election-recap articles (from the New York Times, CNN, NPR, and the Associated Press) is to say that Milei “drew comparisons” to Trump. Those comparisons were almost invariably drawn by other media outlets in their prior coverage of the campaign.

There’s a grain of truth to the comparison. Milei has said he sees Trump as part of the fight against socialism, and Trump has praised Milei. Milei, like Trump, is an outsider to politics, having previously won only one election, to the Argentine Congress in 2021, and he is on the right of the Argentine political spectrum.