An invitation to visit the White House has always been the pinnacle of political whitewashing, at least from a Western perspective. In the Oval Office this Monday was Ahmed al-Sharaa, after he mutated overnight from Abu Mohammad al-Julani, the emir of al-Qaeda splinter group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra), to Ahmed al-Sharaa, the president of the Syrian Arab Republic, shedding his khaki jihadist uniform for a Western suit and tie.

Donald Trump received him behind his desk, as if quizzing him before granting approval. Just three days prior, al-Sharaa/al-Julani’s name was removed from the US list of wanted “terrorists,” with a ten-million-dollar bounty for his capture, dead or alive, like a villain straight out of a Hollywood Western.

Al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House came less than a month after another even more astounding visit — though one that attracted far less attention in Western media: his meeting with Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow. What is more surprising about this is that al-Sharaa had been fighting Russian troops for years, unlike the United States to which he had extended a helping hand in the fight against ISIS, notably through his ties to NATO member Turkey. Yet al-Sharaa did not hesitate to shake hands with the man responsible in large part for the destruction of Syria and the deaths of its people in defending the regime of Bashar al-Assad — al-Sharaa’s sworn enemy, for whom Moscow has provided a haven.