In a pre-taped panel where Trump spoke with several people that his administration had negotiated their release, Trump turned to Pastor Andrew Brunson, who was held over one year in a Turkish prison without charges. The Erdogan government accused him of being a spy for a Kurdish resistance group. After an attempted 2016 ouster of his regime, Erdogan instituted a widespread crackdown on thousands of alleged conspirators, often imprisoning them based on little to no evidence.
That Trump would take time out of a hostage’s story to actually praise the man who falsely jailed him for years — feeding a criticism that he coddles dictators like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un — elicited prompt backlash and bitter bafflement.
