by Doug Wead
Trump immediately corrected himself, declaring defiantly, “Well, I get votes. You know what I do any time I want a vote?”
He is talking about the United Nations.
“They say to me, ‘No, we don’t need to vote on this issue. We are not voting for you.’
“I say, ‘Okay, good. Tell them we are cutting off all aid.’
“We get a call back about two minutes later.
“Suddenly they say, ‘We’ve decided to vote for you.’
Apparently, the president doesn’t always employ this strategy or it doesn’t always work, because after his brief burst of empowerment he returned to his lament. “We don’t even get votes in the United Nations, and we give hundreds of millions of dollars to countries you have never even heard of.”
Why? I asked. Why does the American media defend this and even promote it? Why does the establishment promote it? Why did it take him to expose it?
“It is part of the deep state,” he said. “It is part of the system.” And then he adds that mischievous chuckle he makes, which is hard to describe, “It is also stupidity, to be honest. I think a lot of it is stupidity.”
PRIME MINISTER SHINZO ABE OF JAPAN
My anonymous foreign policy source, a fly on the wall during the president’s most important deliberations, insisted that—behind the scenes, at least—Jared Kushner’s imsight was sometimes crucial. He knew the president and saw his personality as an asset. During the campaign, when his father-in-law was considering tapping Mike Pence to be his running mate, Kushner recommended that the two men play golf together. And that pattern was replayed, at Kushner’s suggestion, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan.9 The prime minister was coming to Washington, so Kushner recommended that Trump host him in a round of golf. Apparently, it was a success. The two men played twenty-seven holes.10 According to my source, “They had a blast together.”11
Donald Trump’s philosophy on trade and its impact on the United States was carefully laid out in a 1990 Playboy article. “I’d throw a tax on every Mercedes-Benz rolling into this country,” Trump said. “And on all Japanese products, and we’d have wonderful allies again.”12
Prime Minister Abe had prepared for his visit with Trump by reading the decades-old article. The question remained: What could they do to reduce America’s $67.6 billion trade deficit?13
Invoking Kushner’s idea of personal diplomacy, Trump used his personality to the fullest. “They flew down to Florida together,” my source told me. “It gave them time to relate to each other. It was something more than having to read talking points and talk about issues. The president likes those relationships. And that’s very important.”
They met again in May 2019 for a ceremonial visit in Japan, where the friendship deepened. There was a dinner at a hibachi restaurant with First Lady Melania Trump and Akie Abe, the wife of the prime minister, joining their husbands. The two world leaders played golf. The American president presented a trophy to the winner of a sumo wrestling tournament,14 and Donald Trump became the first head of state to meet Japan’s new emperor, Naruhito.
PRESIDENT XI AND THE MAGIC OF MAR-A-LAGO
The new president’s relationship with China was one of the most significant issues in the opening weeks of his administration. During the transition, Trump said he was not willing to recognize the One China policy, which does not recognize the Republic of China, which rules from the island of Taiwan. Trump’s position rattled the Chinese. As a result, President Xi Jinping did not make a congratulatory call to the newly elected Trump. For the moment, China and the United States were not talking to each other.
At staff level and at a diplomat level, the American and Chinese teams were meeting about trade and designing strategies for moving things forward, but the process was labored. The Chinese were saying all the right things, but their presentations at meetings consisted of their diplomats reading long scripts. “When they finished a script, they pulled out another one, and then they’d have yet another,” a senior administration source told me. “So we soon realized that their diplomats were more like fax machines. They were conveying messages, but they didn’t really have the ability or the authority to explore changes.”15
Some on the American side concluded that the Chinese were happy to leave things as they were; they had no motivation to change anything.
Jared Kushner had an inspired idea to break the deadlock. If the president could find a way, within himself, to acknowledge the One China policy, keeping in mind that he could always reverse himself later if he so desired, then he could use the change of policy as an exchange for President Xi coming to the United States to meet.
It worked.
Once again, the White House would put the president’s personality to maximum use. The event would take place at his compound in Florida—not the White House. It would be described as a two-day bridge-building summit. The whole schedule was planned to give the two leaders concentrated time together.
The first meeting, on the first day, was fifteen to twenty minutes of casual greeting. It was just the two of them with their translators. Later, Jared and Ivanka Kushner introduced their six-year-old daughter, Arabella, who sang some Chinese poems and songs in Mandarin.16 The world watched this moment with fascination. It was warmly received in China, where Arabella became an online star.
Finally, Trump and Xi sat for an hour and a half. It was at this point, observers say, that the conversation really started to open up. They began talking about North Korea, trade, and many other issues. The two men appeared to be developing a good relationship.
That night, President Trump and the First Lady and President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan had a dinner that lasted a number of hours. Trump began by asking his counterpart questions about Chinese history. Once the conversation started, it kept going, leading to more questions. This was a side of the president that tended to surprise people to whom he revealed it. His conversations were never one-way. He had an insatiable curiosity, and he was a good listener.
As it happened, during the Xi visit, the United States responded to the use of chemical weapons by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s on his own people. It had been a festering issue, since Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people years before—during the Obama administration.
In 2012, Obama had famously warned that the use of chemical weapons would represent a red line that Syrian could not cross without incurring “enormous consequences.” But, the following year, Assad ignored the warning and used chemical weapons anyway. In response, Obama backed down and did nothing.
“I was sitting at the table,” Trump said, describing the moment. “We had finished dinner. We are now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you have ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it.
“And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded. What do you do? And we made a determination to do it. So, the missiles were on the way.
“And I said, ‘Mister President, let me explain something to you … we’ve just launched 59 missiles … heading to Syria and I want you to know that.’
“I didn’t want him to go home and then they say: ‘You know the guy you just had dinner with just attacked [Syria].’”17
By the early fall of 2019, the United States and China were still in the grips of a major trade negotiation that could succeed or fail. Even so, the personal relationship built between Trump and Xi has endured and is seen by the policy makers I spoke with as a foundation for those talks to go forward. For the first time in many decades, the two countries have a chance to resolve some of the hard problems they must face.
ANGELA MERKEL: “GREATEST LEADER IN THE WORLD”?
Two months after he announced his run for president, Donald Trump was praising Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. “Germany is, like, sitting back silent collecting money and making a fortune with probably the greatest leader in the world today, Merkel. She’s fantastic … highl
y respected.”18
It was not just a moment of praise for the German chancellor, it was also criticism of American foreign policy, which some argued had offered up the middle class of the United States as the piggy bank to the world.
Two months later, when Merkel welcomed massive Syrian migration, Trump’s praise turned sour. They were trying to get a grip on international terrorism, sponsored in the Middle East. They were spending a fortune and planning to spend more. Trump, ever the businessman, wondered at the absurdity of spending more money to combat terrorists from the Middle East and then suddenly allowing undocumented migrants from that region to pour into Europe.
Trump said that he understood safe zones for people, but “what’s happening in Germany?” he asked. “I always thought Merkel was, like, this great leader. What she’s done in Germany is insane. It is insane.”19 Later, on the campaign trail, Trump compared Merkel to Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival.
After the election and Trump’s surprise win, the first meeting between the two heads of state was set for March, 2017. In preparation, Chancellor Merkel read Trump’s book The Art of the Deal and watched episodes of his reality show The Apprentice.20 She told friends that she had never prepared more for such a meeting.
At a joint press conference with Merkel, Trump joked, “As far as wiretapping by this past administration, at least we have something in common perhaps.”21 The Obama administration had been caught red-handed eavesdropping on the German chancellor and, days before, Trump had quoted a lawyer on television who suggested that Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower.
Trump’s accusations about wiretapping were met with widespread ridicule and outrage in the American media, but as the president himself pointed out, later events would show them to be not nearly as farfetched as they appeared at the time.
The same month as the Trump-Merkel meeting, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager, Robby Mook, admitted that wiretapping was, indeed, likely going on in Trump Tower.22
How had the Trump-Merkel relationship evolved since those early, uncertain days? How do American diplomats see her? Top administration sources say that she has gotten a lot of political pushback on immigration. Her policies were probably driven by noble intentions, but they may have done a lot to disrupt the confidence and comfort of many people in Germany.
“I do sense that she’s kind of thinking like she’s at the end of her run,” a source told me. “She may be trying to stabilize, solidify her legacy. It doesn’t feel like she’s looking to do a lot of the things that we think are necessary to reframe our bilateral relationship.”23
Today, the American media hails the relationship between Merkel and Obama. She openly admired Obama, who was a rock star in Germany. But when the former American president asked her to back down from Nord Stream 2, the Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline, she demurred. When he asked her to increase Germany’s spending for NATO, she ignored him.
Trump has been respectful, but more confrontational. His focus on the trade imbalance with Germany has been a big irritant to Merkel. She took a shot at Trump in May 2019 in a commencement speech at Harvard University. The German chancellor talked about “tearing down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness.”24
A prominent source involved in the American-German discussions says that Trump and Merkel have had a good personal relationship; all their interactions have been fine. “But I think she’s concluded, ‘Let me just wait this out,’” the source said. “It doesn’t feel like there’s a great desire to make the concessions needed to rebalance the relationship.”25
Secretary of State Pompeo visited with Chancellor Merkel and German foreign minister Heiko Maas in May 2019. A member of the German Bundestag said, “The German-American relationship could not be worse.”26
Well into the president’s third year in office my anonymous senior foreign policy source would tell me that “right now, the relationship is pretty asymmetric. We’ve got thirty-four thousand troops in Germany. We’re doing a lot to defend them, allegedly, from Russia through NATO. And yet they’re doing a gas deal with Russia. Which makes no sense. In addition to that, we have a huge trade imbalance.
“Germany, in general, is now starting to get a lot of pushback from the other European partners. They may feel that Germany is a very strong country who has done too well on trade as well as a lot on these different issues. Now I think there’s a feeling that the wealth should be shared a little bit more fairly, they want some balance.”27
After hearing opinions from others, I was eager to hear what Jared Kushner thought. A lot of Americans have been charmed by the German chancellor’s initial interaction with Ivanka during her first visit to the Trump White House. How did Kushner see her? What lessons can we learn from her life?
“I think she’s been a great leader,” Kushner said. “I think what she’s done for Germany economically has been amazing. She’s got a strong morality, driven by her understanding of German history and her desire to make sure that Germany has a different place in the world from where it was before. There’s no question that Chancellor Merkel is one of the more impressive people that we deal with. She’s very meticulous.
“So, it’s a complicated time. But I think that, again, Angela Merkel is fighting for Germany’s best interests. We respect that. She is very good at it. She is very capable and she is very, very smart.”28
“MACRON CAME IN WITH A LOT OF HOPE”
Like many Americans, Donald and Melania Trump were prepared to embrace France. In their positions as president and first lady, that meant getting along with their counterparts, Immanuel and Brigitte Macron, the president and first lady of France.
Both Donald and Melania had spent a good deal of time in Paris during their adult lives. The president had stayed for only a few days at a time, as a businessman. He had stayed at many hotels and properties. He had once stared out from the balcony of a room at the Hôtel de Crillon in the Place de la Concorde, which was bustling with traffic just below. In the distance, he could see the Eiffel Tower sparkling over the treetops.
Melania, on the other hand, had lived there much longer. She had been an upwardly mobile fashion model, racing across Paris on its rumbling Metro to auditions and living in a cramped apartment.
At times, each of them had passed by the American embassy; each of them had looked through the dark, tree-lined streets that led to Élysée Palace, the official residence of the president of the republic.
When they arrived in Paris in July 2017 to celebrate Bastille Day, they came as leaders of the most powerful nation on earth, and they came with better insights into what was really going on in France than most presidents and first ladies before them.
Critics argued that well-meaning French laws had unintentionally created Islamic terrorist enclaves in some French cities. Arrested criminals were released back into their own neighborhoods without having to post bond. The French police were reluctant to enter these enclaves, where Islamic law protected the people.
A concierge at the Sheraton Paris Airport Hotel and Conference Centre warned tourists not to take either of the last two trains back from downtown Paris. They weren’t safe. In 2016, during his campaign, Trump picked up on this widespread sentiment, saying that his friend Jim “no longer goes to Paris on vacation.”29
If Muslim immigration was affecting French culture, the elected government would not acknowledge it. French political correctness reigned supreme. A three-part, six-hour documentary, shown in America on Netflix, recorded the deadliest terrorist attack in Parisian history, with the deaths of 130 people and more than 400 injured. The elaborate production included interviews with forty persons. Throughout the narrative, people referred to “terrorists” and “attackers.” What motivated these “terrorists” was never discussed. The word “Islam” was never mentioned.
Trump, with his warnings about Islamic terrorism and his attempted ban on travel from select countries he labeled as dangerous, struck mainstream French audiences as harsh. His war on ISI
S was too direct. His story from the campaign trail about “Jim” rankled France’s government-dominated media. It was one thing for the French to complain about their problems; it was something altogether different for an American to do so. The French media had gotten the memo from their American counterparts. The American first couple was treated with only measured civility.
Even so, some in the general public were fascinated. Melania and Brigitte were meticulously compared and lauded.30 Everything they wore, from hats to shoes, was a source of endless discussion. If Melania was the target of adolescent jealousy by New York fashion magazines, she was still somewhat celebrated in France. Paris Match had had her on its cover numerous times.
“You’re in such good shape,” Trump said to France’s sixty-four-year-old first lady. It sent the American media into spasms of horror, but it delighted the French.
The American president, for his part, was deeply impressed with the Bastille Day military parade down the Champs-Élysées. Why couldn’t the United States, the most powerful nation on earth, have a parade like that? The American media hysterically compared Trump to Stalin, Hitler, and Kim Jong-un. Only dictators had military parades, they said, conveniently ignoring the fact that Senator Chuck Schumer, the senior Democrat from New York, had called for such a parade to honor the soldiers who fought in the War on Terror.31 Not to mention the fact that the whole idea had been sparked by the politically correct French.
Trump left France impressed and convinced that he had a friend.
In April 2018, Trump and Melania welcomed the Macrons to the United States. America pulled out all of the stops. On a Monday evening, they dined at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, where Trump showed off the key to the Bastille. It had been one of France’s first gifts to the fledgling United States, which they had helped liberate from England. On Tuesday, the Trumps hosted the Macrons at the White House for the first state dinner of their presidency. On Wednesday, Macron became the first French leader in a decade to address a joint session of Congress.