Trump Concludes First Term Having Forged Personal Bonds With Every Major Authoritarian On Earth, Citing Their Refreshing Decisiveness And Excellent Hotel Construction

WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump completed his first term Wednesday having successfully cultivated warm personal relationships with the leaders of Russia, China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Hungary, and the Philippines, while simultaneously alienating nearly every democratically elected ally the United States has held since the conclusion of the Second World War, sources confirmed.

The President, who once stood beside Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and accepted the Russian leader's denial of election interference over the unanimous conclusions of his own intelligence agencies, repeatedly described his foreign policy doctrine as one of "tremendous chemistry" and "love letters," language he reserved exclusively for men who governed their countries without competitive elections, an independent judiciary, or a functional free press.

"The chemistry was incredible. He wrote me beautiful letters," Trump told reporters of his correspondence with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose regime maintains an extensive network of political prison camps and has, according to multiple human rights tribunals, executed citizens for crimes that include watching foreign television. The President offered similarly warm assessments of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman following the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an event Trump declined to attribute to the Crown Prince despite a CIA assessment that did precisely that.

Sources within the administration confirmed that the President viewed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has dismantled judicial independence and consolidated state media under loyalist ownership, as a "model leader," and praised Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte for the "unbelievable job" he was doing in a campaign of extrajudicial drug killings that human rights groups estimate took between 12,000 and 30,000 lives. No equivalent public praise was extended to outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron, or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, each of whom received from the President a series of public insults and at least one trade dispute.

NATO allies, several of whom Trump publicly demanded should pay back rent for American protection, departed the four years uncertain whether the United States would honor its Article 5 mutual defense obligations should they be invaded by, for example, the Russian leader the President had spent the term complimenting. A senior State Department official, asked whether the doctrine had a name, responded only that "the President prefers people who can get things done without all the meetings."

At press time, the outgoing President was reportedly preparing to relocate to Mar-a-Lago, where he could continue to receive foreign delegations seeking the personal warmth that had characterized his administration's approach to nations whose leaders never had to win an election.