Liberals love to liken the actions of Donald Trump to authoritarians like Hitler and Mussolini, and label Trump as authoritarian himself. They point to his former praise of Vladimir Putin as evidence. Some have compared Trump to the incompetence of the authoritarian President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, since recently, in direct contrast to President Obama’s open hostility towards el-Sisi, Trump has signaled a shift in supporting the controversial Egyptian President:

“We agree on many things,” Trump said of el-Sisi. “We are very much behind Egypt and the people of Egypt. The United States has, believe me, backing, and we have strong backing.”

General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power in July of 2013 when he and other military officers ousted Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected President of Egypt, amidst 14 million protesters calling for Morsi’s resignation. Morsi was an immensely unpopular President, having broken campaign promises of a more inclusive government and overseeing a crumbling economic infrastructure.

After taking Morsi in custody, el-Sisi and Egyptian security forces started a purge of the Muslim Brotherhood, similar to crackdowns made by previous U.S. backed president, Hosni Mubarak. He also suspended the 2012 Egyptian Constitution. El-Sisi would later win 96.1% of the 2014 pro forma election that EU observers said fell “short of constitutional principles.” The election was such a formality that officials irregularly added an extra day of voting due to extremely low turnout. Since, el-Sisi sponsored a massacre of 817 protesters (the Human Rights Watch estimates that the actual toll is well over 1,000), imprisoned tens of thousands of journalists and aid workers, only less than China and Turkey, filled Parliament with his own supporters, and instituted a state of emergency that granted him extrajudicial powers.

Unfortunately, this authoritarian oppression and violation of civil liberties is not uncommon in Egypt, as from 1981 to 2011, President Hosni Mubarak kept Egypt under a state of emergency for the entirety of his presidency. Many Egyptians consider el-Sisi’s dictatorship to be very similar to life under Mubarak’s rule, which was supported by U.S. Presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama. It shouldn’t be a surprise, therefore, that Mubarak was freed from custody just two months ago.

But liberal pundits across the United States have since likened the behavior of Donald Trump to those of el-Sisi, especially given Trump and el-Sisi’s mutual respect for each other. When el-Sisi was invited to the White House, el-Sisi told Trump that “I’ve had a deep appreciation and admiration of your unique personality.” According to the New York Times, both harbor an antipathy and disdain for the Muslim Brotherhood. Both have undermined the press and the judiciary. Both have not made well on campaign promises, like building a wall on the Mexican border or building an expansion of the Suez Canal. Both have a limited rhetorical style, with Trump’s speeches being mocked as inarticulate, “buffoon-like,” and repetitive, while el-Sisi’s Arabic is mocked for being “rustic.” Trump may have even gone farther than el-Sisi in his firing of FBI Director James Comey.

Trump’s support for el-Sisi was heavily criticized in the media due to the latter’s authoritarian tendencies and the fact that President Obama did not openly support Egypt’s President. However, consistent with much of United States foreign policy, Obama never stopped his support of el-Sisi’s military. He made the distinct choice to not call el-Sisi’s overthrow of a democratically elected leader a coup – a decision that allowed the U.S. to keep funneling $1.3 billion in military aid, second only to Israel. Former Secretary of State, John Kerry, even defended el-Sisi’s coup by saying that “they were restoring democracy.” It’s difficult to judge Obama’s administration’s complicity with the el-Sisi regime, given that Egypt is a strong partner in the fight against extremist terrorism.

In the same line of logic, it’s difficult to judge the Trump administration’s relationship with el-Sisi and the Egyptian military, as many liberals would want, given that foreign policy in regards to Egypt has not made significant departures from the Obama administration, and Trump’s embrace of el-Sisi is largely symbolic. U.S. Presidents have supported dictators with atrocious human rights records for over half a century, and for Trump to defy convention by not doing it behind closed doors and embracing these dictators like el-Sisi openly may seem somewhat stupid, but is not more wrong than anyone else.

And while the comparisons between the two heads of state have some validity, to put Donald Trump and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi on the same playing field is, to be frank, bullshit. Trump himself has not imprisoned a single journalist or protester. While doing lip service to el-Sisi, he has not designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. Trump has attacked and mocked the judges who ruled against his Islamophobic travel bans on Twitter, but he has largely stayed within the system when his travel bans are overruled, vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court. No matter how much we want to believe “the Russians won it for Trump,” Trump has never rigged an election. If he truly did, then he did a poor job of only winning 46.1% of the popular vote.

While his rhetoric has mocked, even within American politics, Trump's actions are just not that authoritarian. Working class champion and my favorite President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, tried to add six Supreme Court justices and pack the Supreme Court with his supporters. He issued an average of 307.8 executive orders per year, three times as much as Trump’s current pace. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and declared open season on jailing the press. Perhaps Trump’s most authoritarian action, the firing of James Comey, isn’t even unprecedented – Bill Clinton fired an FBI Director before him.

We can credit this “restraint” from Trump to the strength of checks and balances in the U.S. political system, or because he's just a compulsive liar. Trump may be just like el-Sisi if there weren’t checks to his power. But the more accurate comparison is to the previous Egyptian President – Muhamed Morsi. Morsi was an engineer, a political outsider compared to an opponent who was Hosni Mubarak’s prime minister – an election of the “lesser of two evils” like the United States just had. Morsi barely won the election.

According to Timothy Kaldas, a researcher at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, “the option was basically, do you reject having a revolution or do you vote for also a terrible person who happens to be at least outside of the government? So people voted for the guy that happened to be outside the government.” Doesn’t that sound familiar?

On the bright side for liberals, when Morsi incompetently declared unlimited power for himself, we now know what happened – 14 million people protested against him and he was ousted. Many of us think that Trump is more likely to become impeached than become a dictator, and if that happens, liberals may end up in a similarly unfavorable situation – with President Mike Pence.