Bolton memoir paints Erdogan, Trump as kindred spirits
In his new memoir, former national security adviser John Bolton reveals just how tangled Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's foreign policies are with US President Donald Trump.
US President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton’s bombshell memoir classes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the same group with Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping.
As expected, in his 577-page memoir titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” Bolton describes Erdogan as a “dictator,” likening him to Italy’s fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Bolton provides a first-hand account of several phone calls between Erdogan and US President Donald Trump.
“The Erdogan call turned out to be an experience. Listening to him (his remarks were always interpreted), he sounded like Mussolini speaking from his Rome balcony, except that Erdogan was talking in that tone and volume over the phone. It was as if he were lecturing us while standing on the Resolute desk,” he wrote.
Emphasizing Trump’s tendency to favor “autocrats,” Bolton says Erdogan's phone calls with Trump were very effective in getting the American president to do what he wanted.
