Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was among autocratic leaders around the world who got mad at former U.S. President Donald Trump for his lack of knowledge on major issues, Fiona Hill, an ex-Trump adviser, said in a new book.
The leaders also used Trump’s ignorance to their advantage by making inaccurate claims, Hill said in the memoir, according to news website Business Insider.
“Some leaders, like President Erdoğan of Turkey, would get angry in meetings or on calls when Trump obviously had no idea what they were talking about,” Hill wrote in the book.
“Everyone knew that Trump never paid attention to his brief,” emboldening leaders like Erdoğan, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to make their inaccurate claims, Hill said.
Hill said Erdoğan would deliberately call Trump when he believed his “bad American advisers” were not around, bypassing members of the National Security Council and other White House staff to engage with the president directly.
“Trump gave Putin or whoever was with him the opportunity to promote his own version of history and events and seize the policy advantage,” she said. “If his foreign visitor or caller was one of his favoured strongmen, he would always give him the benefit of the doubt over his advisers.”
Hill served as the Senior Director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council until July 2019.
Ahval