SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Following last week’s controversial meeting with Russian officials, in which President Trump divulged classified intelligence to foreign nationals who have been deemed hostile to U.S. interests, the White House welcomed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday. Trump extended a warm greeting to Erdogan, an authoritarian ruler whose relationship with the United States has been strained and at times combative. The president praised his counterpart’s tough leadership style and boasted of a renewed alliance, remarking that he was eager to begin sharing sensitive state secrets with Turkey.

Trump Tackles Learning Curve with Help from Foreign Authoritarians

Erdogan joins a growing assembly of dictators the president has invited for “friendly discussions.” Mr. Trump also met with polarizing Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte at the beginning of May. But administration insiders say that Trump’s meeting with these questionable figures serves to further the agenda on which he campaigned. The media, they say, has merely distorted or misrepresented the stories. Consider a recent critique published in The Atlantic:

Russia is antagonistic to the United States, although Trump has repeatedly indicated his desire to be chummy with the Russians—after all, as he notoriously said during the presidential campaign, we are both killers, and so on the same moral plane. He apparently divulged the information to show off, which not only shows a lack of self-discipline: It shows, yet again, how easy this man is to play, particularly by veteran manipulators like his two experienced, talented, and thuggish guests. The crisis is made worse by virtue of Trump having just fired the FBI director, apparently for having pushed that Russia investigation too far.

White House officials admitted that Trump was consulting with Moscow, but explained that he was soliciting help to select the next director of the FBI -- someone intimately familiar with Russia, who could better lead the investigation into collusion between a U.S. president and former Soviet spies in the Kremlin.

During his visit with Duterte, the violent Philippines despot who has sanctioned extrajudicial killings of suspected drug dealers or anyone the public considers a nuisance, Trump sought to gain expert advice on employing similar strategies. Allowing ordinary citizens to shoot alleged criminals with impunity could alleviate the costs and manpower constraints plaguing America’s law enforcement agencies, while eradicating “bad hombres” without the need for a border wall.

National Security Advisor McMaster implied that Trump’s conference with Erdogan would yield equally beneficial results. Shortly after defending the president’s rash leak of classified data to Russia in a pique of braggadocio, McMaster told reporters: “President Erdogan put down a violent coup in July. You had the military and the police rising up in an armed rebellion, fighting for values Erdogan doesn’t support in Turkey -- gender equality, secular governance, civil liberties, education, social welfare and other dangerous ideologies. He stopped that coup almost overnight. Naturally, President Trump is keen to learn the ins and outs of effectively ending an inevitable overthrow by millions of disillusioned Americans, many of whom we allow to carry automatic, military grade weapons, regardless of their state of mental fitness.”

Erdogan Challenges Trump’s Access to Intel -- Trump Proves Him Wrong by Handing Over Nuclear Codes

President Trump confessed a kinship with Erdogan and expressed optimism that by sharing a trove of secret government intelligence with Turkey, as with Russia, the United States can forge new alliances to end the global threat of ISIS.

“We’ve had a great relationship and we will make it even better,” Trump commented from the Oval Office as he sat beside Erdogan. “We look forward to having very strong and solid discussions. And that begins with sharing our most intimate secrets with Turkey. I’m very excited to begin. It’s, like, the tit-for-tat of politics. Have you ever heard that expression? I haven’t. Just made it up a few hours ago, along with the word ‘politics.’”

White House aides did describe one tense moment when Erdogan questioned the amount of access Trump truly had to clandestine information.

“The president responded with aplomb,” McMaster revealed. “Mr. Trump told Erdogan, ‘I’m one of the smartest men in the world. Everybody knows that. I have access to everything.’ The Turkish president challenged Mr. Trump’s claims of having exclusive control over the United States’ nuclear arsenal. Then Trump -- and this was glorious -- handed the codes right over to Erdogan. Boy, was he embarrassed. Egg all over his face.”

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