Ahead of the April 23 first-round French presidential vote, in which Le Pen placed second, Trump praised her in interviews and social media. After a police officer was killed in an apparent terrorist attack on April 20, Trump tweeted:

Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 21, 2017

Later that day, during an interview with the Associated Press, Trump elaborated: “I think that it’ll probably help her because she is the strongest on borders and she is the strongest on what’s been going on in France.” He insisted he was not endorsing her, and that he was simply acting—as he is often wont to do, blithely ignoring how such statements function when coming from the leader of the free world—as a pundit. “Look, everybody is making predictions who is going to win. I am no different than you,” he said.

For an American president to even flirt with public support for Le Pen, much less to go as far as he did, was a stunning turn. Her National Front grew out of Vichy collaborationists, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis; when her father and predecessor, Jean-Marie Le Pen, surprised the nation by advancing to the presidential runoff in 2002, he was trounced by Jacques Chirac in the head-to-head matchup. Marine Le Pen has sought to remake the party’s image since taking over, and even suspended her father from his own party for downplaying the Holocaust.

As the results of Sunday’s election, in which Macron, who was himself endorsed by former U.S. President Obama, beat Le Pen by a two-to-one margin, demonstrate, Le Pen has not successfully changed the image of the party among French voters—and one reason was a succession of incidents during the election that suggested she had not changed its substance, either. Yet the FN’s fascist-friendly past did not give Trump pause before delivering his almost-endorsement.

Trump’s friendly relationship with Le Pen might help to explain his somewhat chilly reaction to Macron’s victory. But a comparison with how the president handled a recent referendum in Turkey helps reveal the ways in which Trump is remaking American policy and precedent.

In April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan oversaw a referendum that would grant him sweeping new powers, and effectively ratify a purge and power grab he has conducted over a series of years. Many pro-democracy observers viewed the referendum itself as unsavory, and beyond that, election observers have questioned the integrity of the result, which was a tighter win for Erdogan than expected.

Nonetheless, Trump quickly called Erdogan to congratulate him on his victory. As I wrote at the time, that phone call divided American foreign-policy observers. Some saw it as a horrifying gesture of U.S. support for a power grab. Others viewed it as only a slight (if unwise) deviation from norms, but in line with the U.S. habit of congratulating allies, and even pseudo-allies, on peaceful (if flawed) elections.