After close to three years in the Oval Office, President Trump still doesn’t seem super clear on what it means to be an ally of the U.S.

That’s a big problem for Syria’s Kurds, which fought alongside U.S. troops for years in the battle against ISIS, but were abandoned when Trump withdrew U.S. forces from the area earlier this week.

Turkish forces are now streaming into Syria, and Kurds are fleeing for their lives and Trump is questioning whether the Kurds were ever an “ally” to begin with.

“They didn’t help us in the Second World War, they didn’t help us with Normandy, for example,” he said Wednesday. Instead, he said, the Kurds battled alongside the U.S. for “their land,” and “that’s a different thing.”

But abandoning the Kurds is only the latest dismissal of the concept of an “ally.” In public appearance after appearance, Trump has continued to dismiss the idea of honoring long-term friendships, at times mocking the officials who have complained about his treatment of America’s allies.

“SIR, they are an ALLY,” Trump barks into the microphone at a Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania rally in 2018, mocking a military general. “We must protect them.”

“They’re a long way away!”

Cover image: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an executive order signing event in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, October 9, 2019. Trump warned President Recep Tayyip Erdoan not to take aggressive action in Northern Syria. Photographer: Alex Edelman/Bloomberg via Getty Images