BULAWAYO – Former United States ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has compared President Donald Trump to Robert Mugabe after the Republican gave a speech described as “delusional” as he faces electoral defeat.

Power, who was the UN envoy during Barack Obama’s second term, tweeted: “He’s going full Robert Mugabe,” after Trump gave a typically belligerent speech illegitimately declaring victory in the presidential election for the second time this week.

Mugabe had an iron grip on power for 37 years before he was ousted in a military-led coup in November 2017. He died a year later.

While opposition to Mugabe grew in the 2000s, he was re-elected in 2002, 2008, and 2013, in campaigns noted for electoral fraud, nationalism, and violence.

Some on Twitter disagreed with the characterisation, suggesting that he was in fact “going full Donald Trump”, that he was being “thoroughly American”.

Trump addressed Americans from the White House on Thursday evening, but several news networks cut their feeds of the 16-minute speech, and numerous Republicans condemned the many falsehoods proclaimed in it.

MSNBC halted its live stream of the speech just a few minutes in, with host Brian Williams saying: “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States.

“It was not rooted in reality – and at this point, where our country is, it’s dangerous.”

As the president spoke, CNBC also cut away from Trump’s remarks, to anchor Shepherd Smith who said: “What the president of the United States is saying, in large part, is absolutely untrue.”

On Friday morning, the Pennsylvania Republican senator Pat Toomey told NBC: “The president’s allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated. I’m not aware of any significant wrongdoing here.”

Mugabe lost a first round vote in March 2008, but his shock troops unleashed violence in the run-up to a run-off in June of the same year. Opposition rival Morgan Tsvangirai boycotted the election and Mugabe was declared winner with 85.5 percent of the vote in a hugely discredited election which even his neighbours refused to endorse.

To cover his rights abuses, Mugabe often railed at Western countries and whites, once telling a rally: “We must make them tremble.”