Mr. Trump acknowledged that the two countries “have a few things” they don’t agree on, but he pointedly did not mention the abysmal human rights record of Mr. Sisi’s government, which the State Department and human rights groups have accused of gross abuses, including torture and unlawful killings.

Nor, apparently, did Mr. Trump raise the case of Aya Hijazi, an American citizen who works with street children. She was arrested in May 2014 on specious human trafficking charges and imprisoned for 33 months in violation of Egyptian law. Her case has been a cause célèbre among human rights groups, though she is but one of 40,000 people who have been detained, most for purely political reasons.

Egypt is one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East and receives some $1.3 billion in annual military aid, but years of tumult have strained relations. President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011, and after a brief period of democratic rule that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power, a military coup in 2013 engineered by Mr. Sisi overthrew the Brotherhood and led to more repression.

Mr. Sisi first cracked down on the Islamists, including a 2013 massacre that killed more than 800 people, then turned his sights on secular opponents and nongovernmental groups. The United States suspended delivery of a modest amount of military aid and asked for improvements in human rights and democracy, which never happened.

Mr. Trump has now made it transparently clear that human rights and democracy are not his big concerns and that he places more value on Egypt as a partner in the fight against the Islamic State. What he does not grasp is that, while Egypt is an important country, it cannot be a force for regional stability nor the partner Mr. Trump imagines on counterterrorism or anything else if Mr. Sisi does not radically change his ways. Mr. Sisi’s repression against enemies real and imagined, his management of the economy and inability to train, educate and create jobs for his nation’s youth can only fuel more anger and unrest.