“And look at these people, how nice they are. Look at them. They’re so easy to deal with. Look at them. Central casting. There’s no Hollywood set where you could produce people that look like them,” US President Donald Trump gushed over the members of the Turkish delegation to the G-20 summit in Osaka.

The words followed his introductory statement, watched by millions of Turks on television or social media: “It’s my honor to be with a friend of mine, somebody I’ve become very close to, in many respects, and he’s doing a very good job: the president of Turkey.”

Trump went on, “And we have a meeting largely to do with trade. We’re doing more and more business, and we expect to be able to quadruple that business with Turkey. We think it will be great. They’re great craftsmen. They have great product. And we’re opening it up. We also do military trading, and they buy a lot of our military equipment.”

Trump resembled a street peddler more than a statesman, but he was successful. The Turkish delegation beamed, flattered. In addition to Erdogan, they included high-level Turkish officials from the foreign and defense ministers to president’s son-in-law and the Turkish spy master.