Trump's latest dictator-bro is apparently Turkish President Recep Ergodan
President Trump counts Xi Jinping as a "good friend," boasts of his "great relationship" with Rodrigo Duterte, and has an autographed Elton John CD to gift to Kim Jong Un. On Monday, he met one-on-one with Vladimir Putin for more than two hours, after basking in the Russian president's apparent praise for months.
So it may come as no surprise that Trump reportedly counts Turkish President Recep Erdogan among his coterie of authoritarian bros. CBS News' Ian Bremmer reported Monday that at last week's highly contentious NATO summit, where Trump pressed allies to spend more on defense, Trump cited the Turkish strongman as an example of a leader who "does things the right way":
Bremmer noted that Trump's open lauding of Erdogan's methods is just a bit alarming, given his "executive presidency [and] the purges that have gone on internally. Turkey is hardly a liberal democracy at this point." But what's a little authoritarianism among friends?
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Watch Bremmer's full report below. Kimberly Alters
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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