Four Ways Heads of State Deal with Trump
Man child on the Diplomatic stage
Ah, the inevitable press conference. How does one share a stage with such a broken hunk of man-child? At present the mandarins in Beijing are trying to figure out how to navigate a joint press conference with President Donald J. Trump. Like France, South Africa and Great Britain before them. How does one manage such a thing without any public rudeness — something intolerable to Chinese leadership, but unfortunately all-too-common in Trump, 2.0. Trump’s adolescent unpredictability is antithetical to modern diplomatic protocols and thereby the conduct of nations. With that in mind, it is better to have Trump visit you than having to visit Trump in Trump’s Washington. There has the home field advantage, and in his element he is more likely to pop off than to not.
Just last week Beijing cleared that hurdle, negotiating a state visit from the American President amid trade tensions. Further: “Chinese state media and the Chinese foreign ministry said the call happened at the White House's request,” reported NBC News. Beijing, 1, Trump, 0.
Clearly, Beijing has learned from the disaster of President Volodymyr Zelensky's dramatic visit to the White House in February. That heated Winter argument on the subject of thankfulness and respect was precipitated by the preternaturally dim Brian Glenn, the Chief White House Correspondent for something called Real America’s Voice (Averted Gaze). Glenn’s geo-strategically profound question into the nature of President Zelensky’s wardrobe led to a diplomatic row that culminated in his wartime visit cut short and a lunch invitation rescinded. From NPR:
KHALID: Well, the two men were supposed to have lunch. That did not happen. They were then supposed to have a joint press conference. That also got canceled. And then, of course, there is that mineral deal that was supposed to be signed. It was not signed today. And, Ailsa, it is not clear when and if it will actually be signed.
It was; the mineral deal ultimately got signed on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, roughly two months after the public spat. But what makes for a good — or at least not acidic — joint press conference with Trump?
A Subservient Patience
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa fared a little better than Zelensky in that he at least was not thrown out of the White House before eating lunch. But the President of the second-wealthiest country in Africa had to endure a humiliating lecture on a manufactured white farmer genocide story. With: A subservient patience. Because, among other things, South Africa wants Trump to attend the G20 Summit that they are hosting in November. Also: a trade deal.
President Ramaphosa, we cannot fail to note, excels in high-pressure negotiations with bigots. “He was at the nerve centre of negotiating an end to the racist system of apartheid in the early 1990s, and in keeping South Africa together when many had prophesised its fatal fracture,” Nick Ericsson wrote for BBC the day after the meeting. “He has stayed calm, smiled and faced down far more bitter opponents before.” Imagine coming out of apartheid, becoming President, and then having to deal with this …
“These are all white farmers that are being buried,” sneered Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by a screenshot of Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo, not South Africa (Exaggerated cough). President Ramaphosa stifled a chuckle but kept a stiff upper lip. I have it on good authority that Ramaphosa has a doctorate in dealing with corpulent, elderly bigots. Ramaposa’s political career began as secretary general of South Africa's biggest and most powerful trade union, the National Union of Mineworkers in the early 80s. It sucks that he has to deal with this at this point in his career, but: Trump.
Bring Presents
Trump likes gifts, the more lavish the better. It soothes the corruptness of his bing. Quatar recently gifted Trump a $400 million Boeing 747, to be retrofitted as Air Force One. British Prime Minister Starmer didn’t just present Trump with an invitation from King Charles. There was ceremony to it. Because Trump likes ceremony almost as much as he loves flattery and only a little bit less than he loves strawberry Starburst candies. Trump loves the British royal family — something inherited from his Scottish-born mother — which makes Sir Starmer’s invite even more meaningful to the American President. “Kier Starmer, the British prime minister, he went there with with you know famously he sort of took a letter from the King out of his pocket and said oh look here's your invitation to …state,” Richard Walker of DW News reminds us.
And German Chancellor Friedrich Merz one-upped Starmer. If Starmer’s present was thoughtful in that he researched Trump’s Anglophilia to put it to diplomatic use, then Merz’s was even more layered. And subservient. Last Thursday, Merz gifted President Trump a gold gilded framed copy of his grandfather’s birth certificate. “The gold-encased present, a reflection of the president’s signature Oval Office décor, paid tribute to Friedrich Trump, who was born in Kallstadt, Germany, in 1869 and later immigrated to the United States,” wrote Anna Young of the NYPost. The gold not only matched the White House decor, it matched the tint of his preferred hair dye.
Contrast that against South African President Ramaphosa, who told Trump “I’m sorry I dont have a plane to give you.” But then, Ramaphosa was set up to fail against Trump. He, of the “shithole” country.
Let Trump Dominate the Talk.
Being studiously, unequivocally Beta to Trump’s Alpha helps in dealing with President Trump. Mase to Trump’s P Diddy, if you will. Frankly, the Zelensky state visit was doomed ab initio when they started interrupting each other and stumbling over their own attack lines. This only led to escalating tensions. And Trump is psychologically predisposed to never, ever let anyone get in the last word.
Contrast that against the high political theater of Chancellor Mertz, who seemed perfectly content to sit back and become background noise for Trump’s monologue. “By the a quick count it looked like Donald Trump spoke more than 6,000 words in in that Oval Office encounter and Mertz was about 650, so it's almost 10 to1,” Richard Walker brought up. Michaela Küfner, also of DW News confirmed that there were actual discussions among the German delegation ahead of last week’s state visit of word count splits. “My sense is that Mertz's only played out 20% of the references that he clearly had in his pocket with him,” Kufner said.
Granted, Zelesnky was probably jet-lagged, hangry (no lunch) and battle-fatigued from leading a war against a military superpower. Contrast Zelensky’s performance against Starner’s. “While cordial, the initial meeting in the Oval Office between Sir Keir and Trump left no doubt that the US president hoped to be firmly in charge,” writes Sam Francis, Becky Morton and Bernd Debusmann Jr for BBC. “The meeting was a pattern we've now seen six times with foreign leaders at the Trump White House, including with French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this week: Trump taking control of the room and using the opportunity to get his own messages, both domestic and international, across to the reporters there.”
President Macron’s visit in March was marginally successful. Or, rather, not unsuccessful. Macron did not get a definitive answer from Trump on the Ukraine. In Macron’s defense, it was actually very early in the administration and world leaders were still trying to figure out how to deal with Trump. So it served more as a study in dealing with Trump for later heads of state. Helen Drake, the Professor of Diplomatic Studies at Loughborough University London's Institute for Diplomacy and International Affairs wrote for The Conversation:
At times, Trump looked enraptured by (Macron’s) performance from such an interesting specimen of utter Europeanness. At others, the host fidgeted and listened stony-faced to the halting interpretation of Macron’s rapid-fire French. He tried a few gauche niceties of his own (“say hello to your beautiful wife”) and dialled up to the max his personal brand of touchy-feely diplomacy.
Beyond the memorable set pieces of diplomatic theatre lies, of course, the message itself. This must represent the voice, the interests and the concerns of the state or other diplomatic actor. But it may well go against the flow, disrupting the smooth surface of diplomatic pleasantries.
Share Dislikes
Finally, how better to foster bonhomie with Trump, the king of resentment, than to share common dislikes. It is highly uncommon for German Chancellors to publicly badmouth former Chancellors not only in public, but in a foreign country. Still the phenomenon of Trump has shaken up all previous rules of trans-Atlantic politesse. Trump, like Putin, never got along with Angela Merkel, a Catholic leader with a conscience regarding immigrants. It all came to a head in 2018 at a G-7 Summit, where he was being pressured to sign the annual joint communique. From Newsweek:
"It was at this point, towards the end of the summit, that Chancellor Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada got together with some of the allies and really wanted to press Trump directly to sign the communiqué, that talked about the commitment to a rules-based international order. Trump was sitting there with his arms crossed, clearly not liking the fact that they were ganging up on him. He eventually agreed and said OK he'll sign it. And at that point, he stood up, put his hand in his pocket, his suit jacket pocket, and he took two Starburst candies out, threw them on the table and said to Merkel, 'Here, Angela. Don't say I never give you anything,'" Bremmer described to CBS.
If Trump is discharging red and pink Starbursts into the atmosphere, then you know it must be serious. Trump particularly dislikes Merkel’s Great Migrant Gamble, where 1.7 million people applied for asylum in Germany between 2015 and 2019. “I told her it shouldn’t have happened,” Trump snapped, refusing to even mention the name of Angela Merkel. Imagine the first elected woman Chancellor of Germany, reduced to the pronoun “her.” Trump and Merz have in common between them a marked antipathy towards Merkel. An Old Prussian boys club. Merz disagrees publicly with Merkel on immigration and has been described, over the years, as her antithesis. To his political credit — as well as moral failure — Merz has leaned into this in his relationship with Trump. This also helps him neutralize his domestic far-right, up to a point.
I never thought that I would miss Angela Merkel, who was so late to taking a humanitarian view of refugees. But when she did, there was no Western leader who sacrificed as much as she against the prevailing far-right zeitgeist that remains with us today.
”Recently we spent a week in agriculture-based communities in California’s Central Valley … The Central Valley is an important, and under-covered, part of America. It is important in obvious, dramatic ways. The Central Valley represents roughly 1% of US farmland, yet produces as much as 25% (by value) of all US-grown food. It is at the center of long-standing debates about California’s water supply, about its immigration policy, about its economic inequalities, even about the routes for its High-Speed Rail system. The Central Valley also has an outsized place in American cultural imagery. It’s been the setting for famed literary works, from Bret Harte through John Steinbeck to Joan Didion. Its landscape has been in movies, from East of Eden to American Graffiti to Ladybird (and the less well-known but excellent McFarland USA.) Demographically most of it is majority-Latino; environmentally it has more hazards than the rest of the state; economically it would be poorer overall even than Mississippi, if it were considered as a stand-alone unit. Its economic leadership is mainly Anglo. It is in the part of California that votes red.” (Deborah and James Fallows/Breaking the News)
“Saturday night, Donald Trump declared war on us. The presidential memorandum he issued, titled, ‘Department of Defense Security for the Protection of Department of Homeland Security Functions,’ is an open-ended declaration that he will use the National Guard to subdue protests against his government. The memo claims that the protests against ICE now underway in southern California and elsewhere “constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” and authorizes the Secretary of Defense to mobilize not just National Guard members but also ‘any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary.’ Its language is extremely dangerous. But before you freak out over the words, remember this: Trump also chickens out when he’s faced with countervailing power.” (Micah Sifry/The Connector)
“At the BET Awards last night, just a few miles from the protest area, Doechii used her acceptance speech to say, ‘I want y'all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us.’ >> The Los Angeles Press Club tells me it has counted at least 30 incidents of police violence against journalists in the L.A. area since Friday. There have also been several episodes of agitators vandalizing TV news trucks. >> Yesterday more than two dozen media organizations signed a letter to Noem expressing alarm ‘that federal officers may have violated the First Amendment rights of journalists covering recent protests and unrest.’ Here's the letter. >> The new cover of TIME … is all about Trump's deportation program. Notably TIME ‘joined ICE officers on a pair of morning raids in the New Orleans area,’ and those raids ‘didn't lead to arrests.’ >> L.A. Times columnist Mary McNamara follows up on our scoop yesterday: ‘Why on earth is Dr. Phil involved in immigration raids?’ (His spokesperson says he was with Tom Homan, not out in the field, but he clearly received special access.)” (Brian Stelter/Reliable Sources)