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Lady in red? Trump told to see China president as woman to help pronounce name
Source: The Guardian
Lady in red? Trump told to see China president as woman to help pronounce name
Advisers thought this might ensure Trump pronounced Xi Jinping’s surname as ‘shee’, according to Michael Wolff’s book
Tom Phillips in Beijing
Fri 5 Jan ‘18 04.58 GMT
As Donald Trump pondered ways to revolutionise perhaps the world’s most crucial and complex diplomatic relationship last year he faced one major hurdle: he couldn’t pronounce the name of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The solution? Think of him as a woman.
That, according to Michael Wolff’s explosive insider account of Trump’s White House, is the advice aides gave the US president as he prepared for a crunch two-day summit with the Communist party leader at his Mar-a-Lago estate in April last year.
Wolff’s book, obtained this week by the Guardian and set for publication on Friday, describes how Trump required “some tutoring” with regard to the family name of his Chinese counterpart, which is roughly pronounced “shee”. Not known for his linguistic talents, Trump was instead prone to call the leader of the world’s No 2 economy “Mr X-i”.
To avoid such gaffes during Xi’s visit, “the president was told to think of him as a woman and call him ‘she’,” Wolff claims in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
-snip-
Advisers thought this might ensure Trump pronounced Xi Jinping’s surname as ‘shee’, according to Michael Wolff’s book
Tom Phillips in Beijing
Fri 5 Jan ‘18 04.58 GMT
As Donald Trump pondered ways to revolutionise perhaps the world’s most crucial and complex diplomatic relationship last year he faced one major hurdle: he couldn’t pronounce the name of China’s leader, Xi Jinping.
The solution? Think of him as a woman.
That, according to Michael Wolff’s explosive insider account of Trump’s White House, is the advice aides gave the US president as he prepared for a crunch two-day summit with the Communist party leader at his Mar-a-Lago estate in April last year.
Wolff’s book, obtained this week by the Guardian and set for publication on Friday, describes how Trump required “some tutoring” with regard to the family name of his Chinese counterpart, which is roughly pronounced “shee”. Not known for his linguistic talents, Trump was instead prone to call the leader of the world’s No 2 economy “Mr X-i”.
To avoid such gaffes during Xi’s visit, “the president was told to think of him as a woman and call him ‘she’,” Wolff claims in Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/05/trump-china-president-woman-name-xi-jinping
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