Our authoritarian president congratulated Erdoğan on his winning sweeping new powers in a referendum conducted while most dissenters are languishing in prison. Of course he did.

Trump’s call came as the Turkish government announced late on Monday night that it would be extending the state of emergency in the country by three more months.

International observers monitoring the Turkish referendum concluded in a preliminary report on Monday that the campaign and vote took place in a political environment where the “fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed”.

And Donnie from Queens is down with that.

Trump’s congratulatory message strikes a starkly different tone from the statement issued by the US state department on Monday, which urged Erdoğan to respect his citizens’ fundamental rights and noted the report’s findings of “irregularities on voting day and an uneven playing field during the difficult campaign period”.

Blah blah blah; hey, the guy knows how to whip people into line.

Trump’s congratulatory call stands in contrast to the cautious response from several European leaders. Some officials appeared wary of further antagonizing Turkey, urging restraint and a commitment to Democratic values. Others were more forthright and declared Sunday’s vote the end to Turkey’s decade-long attempt to join Europe’s 28-member bloc.

But our boy of course had no such scruples. Why would he? Erdoğan is his kind of guy.

(Except for that whole being a Muslim thing. Awkward. I guess they just don’t talk about it.)