ADEN, Yemen — President Donald Trump accepts no diplomatic straitjacket. During his first term, he feted North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Sometimes, breaking diplomatic china pays off. Trump deserves credit for the Abraham Accords, even if the Nobel Committee’s blacklisting of the president will forever dash his dreams of a Nobel Peace Prize.
There is no one with whom he will not negotiate, from the Kremlin to Hamas. Trump believes in a transactional approach. The more odious the partner, the more rewarding any potential peace.
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Trump may wish his legacy to be that of a master deal-maker, but his embrace and empowerment of Islamists will likely overshadow his peacemaking for generations to come.
Consider his record: During his first term, Trump put outreach to the Taliban on overdrive. Trump is right to blame former President Joe Biden for bungling the subsequent U.S. withdrawal, but the larger problem, empowering and trusting the Taliban, was all Trump. Trump might believe the idea that he could turn the Taliban to fight other terrorists, but this made about as much sense as believing he could use Jeffrey Epstein to combat human trafficking.
Trump’s embrace of both Qatar and Turkey empowers the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist extremists worldwide. The withdrawal of U.S. aircraft from Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base prior to the Iran conflict suggests U.S. basing there is more of a liability than an asset. That Qatar treats Al Udeid as a get-out-of-jail-free card in its funding of the world’s most virulent terrorist groups makes the bargain worse. True, Qatar shares intelligence that the CIA uses against some terrorists, but the sheikhdom’s role is more like an informant in a drug cartel than a paragon of virtue.
Turkey’s behavior is worse. History will judge Trump’s bromance with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as foolish. Erdogan is an ideologue who has steered Turkey’s once-vibrant economy off a cliff. Turks detest him and anyone who supports him, hence the mass boycott of businesses associated with Erdogan and his political party.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama once celebrated Erdogan as a pragmatist. Both look foolish in hindsight. In the first five years of Erdogan’s rule, the impunity the Turkish leader signaled toward Islamists led to the murder rate of Turkish women increasing by 1,400%. When the Islamic State erupted, Erdogan’s son enriched himself in its oil trade. Rather than target the Islamic State and al Qaeda, Erdogan armed them, turning his military instead on the secular Kurds. Today, Erdogan repeats the pattern by embracing Hamas and deeming Israel to be the terrorist state. Trump’s reaction? Pressuring Congress to reward his terrorism sponsorship with America’s most advanced F-35.
Appeasing Erdogan was the major reason why Trump lifted sanctions on Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al Sharaa, leader of a former al Qaeda branch. At the time, al Sharaa did not control half the country. Lifting sanctions enables billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to flow through al Sharaa and Erdogan’s hands. If they divert only 1% of a $5 billion aid flow to their radical associates, they can fund 10,000 suicide bombings at a cost of $5,000 each. It is a deal more destructive than Obama’s sending pallets with hundreds of millions of dollars of cash to Iran.
After Pakistani Army Chief Asim Munir sponsored an April 2025 terrorist attack against India in which terrorists demanded Hindus recite Quranic verses before executing them, Trump feted Munir at the White House. Indians saw that as akin to inviting the Hamas mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre to the Oval Office. At the very least, it signaled to the Pakistanis that they could sponsor Islamist attacks without consequence.
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Trump’s insistence on unity in Somalia and Yemen also emboldens Islamist groups such as al Shabaab and Islah, Yemen’s Muslim Brotherhood group. Both embrace al Qaeda. He ignores Somaliland and South Yemen, both progressive, pro-Western entities.
Every president makes mistakes. To empower terrorist-supporting Islamists repeatedly suggests intention. In 2016, Trump quipped that Obama created the Islamic State. Obama was indeed negligent. How ironic that Trump today has become Obama on steroids.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.