President Donald Trump, a former reality TV producer, has reimagined foreign leader visits to the White House, using the usually buttoned-up bilateral talks as opportunities to hijack media coverage on his own terms.
On Wednesday, for the second time this year, Trump gave a head of state or government visiting the White House a public dressing down before members of the media.
TRUMP SHOWS VIDEO IN OVAL OFFICE TO SOUTH AFRICA’S PRESIDENT OF WHITE ‘BURIAL SITES’
Last time, it was Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with hopes for a minerals deal between the United States and Ukraine temporarily dashed. This time, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa received the Zelensky treatment when he sought to counter Trump’s claims of a white genocide in South Africa, all while imploring the president to cooperate on trade and future economic partnerships.
After that first meeting, Washington speculated whether the sitdown’s about-face, spurred by one particular exchange between Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance, had been planned in advance.
But Wednesday’s spectacle, which featured Trump dimming the lights in the Oval, wheeling out a television, and playing a compilation clip of a South African opposition leader chanting “kill the farmers” to crowds of hundreds, if not thousands, of black supporters, was clearly choreographed.
A White House official told the Washington Examiner that Trump himself came up with the idea of playing a video for Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, and the communications team was tasked with building out the compilation.
The White House declined to say if they alerted the South African delegation of the president’s intent. A spokesperson for the South African Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A longtime Republican operative with close ties to the Trump White House told the Washington Examiner that Wednesday’s scene in the Oval was “classic Trump.”
A second Republican strategist and alumnus of the first Trump administration suggested that the “made-for-TV moment” might have been an attempt to distract from Republicans’ fight on Capitol Hill over the president’s reconciliation tax package, dubbed the “big, beautiful bill.”
“He certainly knows how to steal a headline,” that person said.
The White House National Security Council did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment regarding Trump’s strategy for these foreign leader visits and whether that strategy was to send a message to a foreign or domestic audience.
“This seems far more like an audience of foreign leaders who want to curry favor and have their own photo op in the Oval Office which is something that they could use at home with their own constituencies,” Tom Cochran, a former Obama State Department aide, told the Washington Examiner.
Former Biden State Department spokesman Ned Price disagreed, contending “this is entirely about domestic politics, with America’s strength and standing in the world taking a direct hit.”
“I say that because South Africa is a key hedging country, and any U.S. vacuum there will be filled by China, Russia, and other competitors,” Price told the Washington Examiner. “South Africa is also a leader within the so-called Global South, and antagonism between Washington and Pretoria will have outsized implications in some of the most important emerging economies around the world.”
Cesar Conda, a former chief of staff to Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was in the Senate, praised the strategy, describing it as “phenomenal.”
“All presidents have used Oval Office appearances and state dinners at the White House as a powerful tool to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives, but Trump has taken it to another level,” Conda told the Washington Examiner.
One diplomat told the Washington Examiner, foreign service officers in Washington understand the potential trap their head of state or government could be walking into, having to thoroughly prepare their principal.
Wednesday’s meeting started cordially enough, with Trump acknowledging former world No. 1 golf player Ernie Els, brought by Ramaphosa at Trump’s request. Zelensky had tried a similar tactic by bringing the Ultimate Fighting Championship belt won by Ukrainian boxer Oleksandr Usyk to his sit-down with the president.
Ramaphosa also brought a book on South Africa’s numerous golf courses, with a foreword written by Els, to give to the president. With his visit coinciding with the news that Trump would be accepting a gifted jet from the Qatari government, the South African president joked to his counterpart that he was “sorry” he didn’t “have a plane to give” as a gift.
“I wish you did. I would take it,” Trump responded. “If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.”
But Wednesday’s meeting was always going to be controversial, considering Trump and his administration’s criticism of South Africa and the recent announcement that the U.S. would begin granting refugee status to certain white Afrikaners, even as it strips asylum protections from migrants from the Middle East and South America.
Furthermore, Max Primorac, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, argued that South Africa’s foreign policy has been “hostile” to U.S. security interests “for years.”
“They are Africa’s number one ally of Communist China, Iran, and Hamas,” Primorac told the Washington Examiner. “Their systematic policy of persecuting the country’s white farmers is unacceptable and President Trump is correct to offer them safe harbor in the United States. Therefore, it makes no sense to continue providing South Africa with billions of dollars in foreign aid.”
Peter Loge, the director of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, told the Washington Examiner that Trump “appears to approach the presidency the same way he approached contestants on The Apprentice.”
“He is very good at the show of governing, governing as spectacle. Policy matters but the point is the show. It’s like professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is hard and people get hurt, but the point is the theater rather than the sport,” he said. “President Trump performs power by berating people in public, and then cutting deals in private. The show of power and force is the focus, the outcomes come later and are often far less than promised during the show but that’s not the point.”
But Loge says foreign leaders will still take part in Trump’s game, even knowing “how the show will go.”
TRUMP SHOWS VIDEO IN OVAL OFFICE TO SOUTH AFRICA’S PRESIDENT OF WHITE ‘BURIAL SITES’
“If they publicly praise Trump, thank him for all of his support, and take the public shouting, they may get the deal they want,” he added. “The show is part of his policy process. If you want the policy, you have to be willing to be a character in his show.”
On his departure, Ramaphosa seemed to confirm that hypothesis, telling reporters that after the tense moment in the Oval, the rest of the day’s meetings went “very well” and that Trump likely heard his defense of his claims.