How Donald Trump is turning the Oval Office into a minefield for foreign leaders

Another incident with the South African President in Washington and the White House is now creating a specific pattern for how Donald Trump chooses to interact in front of open cameras with foreign leaders.

Cyril Ramaphosa also found himself in the uncomfortable chair to the right of the American President with cameras and microphones on… After asking for the lights to be turned down, Trump showed a video that supposedly depicted atrocities and massacres against white South African farmers. When the lights came back on, the US President spoke pompously about “white genocide” and for several minutes berated and lectured the South African President.

Despite the good preparation of the South African delegation, despite the fact that the country's President was accompanied by the (white) Minister of Agriculture and personal friends of the American President who are originally from South Africa, nothing could change Donald Trump's mind, narrative, and behavior...

Two exceptions that prove the rule

Given that Ramaphosa was not the first, but the last – until the next – in a series of high-level meetings from which few leaders have “escaped”, the exceptions, or rather the exceptions that confirm the rule, are only two.

Emmanuel Macron handled the situation with the American President perhaps better than anyone else, having a permanent smile on his face even when he interrupted him by holding his hand and correcting him about American and European spending in Ukraine.

The second, only because he used royal assistance, was the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Keir Starmer, who, before Trump's speech began, handed him an official invitation from King Charles for an official visit to Britain...

Trump, who is extremely open to such offers – as well as prestigious or multi-million dollar gifts, such as the plane from Qatar – made sure to stick to an official bilateral appearance…

The new rule and the unique Zelensky

There is no other leader who has visited the White House during Trump’s second term who has not found himself in a difficult, or at least uncomfortable, position. Trump has not been drawn to his personal friends, Benjamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Jordan. Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the praise and kind words that he himself returned, received nothing from the Oval Office on either of his visits, or almost nothing. The Israeli prime minister was clearly surprised when the US president announced that Gaza would be placed under American control and transformed into a tourist resort, while the King of Jordan was clearly at a dead end when the US president informed him of the White House’s decision to accept refugees from the Palestinian enclave.

The new Canadian Prime Minister’s position was also extremely uncomfortable, as he overheard the US President talking to him side-by-side about the “desire” for the 51st State and, despite the crisis between the two countries, did little to oppose it. However, the clearest evidence that the Oval Office is now a “minefield” for any foreign leader is Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

The way the Ukrainian President’s visit to Washington began, escalated, and ended shocked not only Kiev or Europe, but the United States itself. Trump, in collusion with his vice president, put the Ukrainian President in a most uncomfortable, even embarrassing, position at a time when he and his country need the United States most. It is the combination of aggression, word choice, and tone with which Zelensky was ousted from the White House that will likely be difficult to overcome in the future.

Trump may have changed the manner and content of diplomatic protocol in the White House, but he knows very well how to behave and when.

Trump's attitude is neither uncritical nor careless, but it is also the fact that it resembles that of an all-powerful monarch towards weak and dependent subjects. The way Trump imagined coming to change everything is not necessarily bad – although it is certainly outside the norm – for the US, since for him what matters are results.