Leaked Transcripts Show How Foreign Leaders Manipulate Trump

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Leaked Transcripts Show How Foreign Leaders Manipulate Trump

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/an-unprecedented-look-into-trumps-stagecraft/535794/


David A. Graham Aug 3, 2017 Global



What goes on when heads of state chat? It’s highly unusual for the public to know. Both parties usually release a “readout” that crisply summarizes the call and smooths over the roughest spots. .............................


Until now. (This truly is the never-say-never administration.) The Post on Thursday published full White House transcripts of two January calls—the Turnbull conversation, and another with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. As one might expect, they are full of interesting nuggets.

In those early days, before chaos totally engulfed his White House, Trump shows himself to be attentive to campaign promises about Mexico paying for a border wall and about not accepting any refugees. The president comes off as underprepared at times; he asks Turnbull to tutor him on details of a U.S agreement with Australia. He is full of bluster and nonsense (“I won with a large percentage of Hispanic voters,” he tells EPN, untruthfully) and outrageous comments (“Up in New Hampshire—I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den—is coming from the southern border,” Trump says, although he lost the state to Hillary Clinton in the general election.)

He is also unusually clear and complex in his discussions. Some publications, most notably STAT, have picked up on a marked decline in the president’s vocabulary and syntax over past statements. But while Trump is brash and unprepared in these calls, he is comparatively articulate—raising the possibility that he is intentionally dumbing down his speech in public, not only in rallies and speeches but also in press interviews, where he is sometimes entirely incoherent.

It’s probably not a good thing, in general, for transcripts like this to leak. .......................................That sources saw fit to leak these, against all precedent, shows how little control Trump has over the executive branch, and how many people there seem to dislike or distrust him.................................



..............Two countries, two leaders, two approaches—yet both succeeded, for different reasons. The calls with Malcolm Turnbull and Enrique Peña Nieto are not only a valuable document of how diplomacy works; they would also set a pattern. Time and again, foreign leaders have found that Trump is hardly the hardened negotiator he claims, but is instead a pushover. If they can get into a one-on-one conversation with Trump, they can usually convince him to come around to their position. If that was true on paying for the wall and taking refugees, it stands to reason it would be true for lesser Trump priorities, too.