Government officials and business leaders who visit Donald Trump have learned to come bearing gifts, flattery or ideally both to win over the relentlessly transactional president.
Offering fancy gifts to world leaders has long been customary diplomatic practice, but Trump’s guests have gotten the message that they need to be especially strategic with their proffered tokens of respect and fealty, Axios reported.
Some people have privately compared Trump’s fixation with gifts to a “mob boss” shaking down his associates, according to Axios.
One high-profile gift came from U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who in February brought Trump an embossed letter from Britain’s King Charles III personally inviting Trump for an “unprecedented” second state visit.
Trump—who is fascinated by the British monarchy—beamed and called the king “a beautiful man and a wonderful man.”
That same month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave Trump a golden pager to commemorate the explosive devices Israel detonated last year, killing or injure thousands of members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, CNN reported.
He also praised Trump as the “greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”
And Russian President Vladimir Putin commissioned an oil painting of Trump and sent it to the White House in March.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi and Jordan’s King Abdullah II all brought the gift of strategically deployed flattery, according to CNN.
“I was so excited to see such a celebrity on television,” Ishiba told Trump during a joint press conference. “On television he is frightening, and he has a very strong personality, but when I met with him, actually, he was very sincere and very powerful, and with strong will for the United States.”
Trump smiled broadly and responded by giving him a signed photo, according to CNN.
Modi, meanwhile, said his vision for his country was to “make India great again: or MIGA,” earning a fist pump from Trump.
And like Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah II tapped into Trump’s obsessive rivalry with the only person who has beaten him in a presidential contest—Joe Biden—by implying that Trump would have better luck than his predecessor at achieving peace in the Middle East, CNN reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also brought Trump a gift to their disastrous White House meeting in late February: the gold championship belt worn by current world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk.
But instead of immediately giving Trump the belt, he started off by taking out a folder and showing the president gruesome pictures of injured Ukrainian prisoners of war who had been freed, Time magazine reported.
Zelensky was trying to reach beyond Trump’s transactional side and connect with him on a human level, he told the magazine. The move backfired.
The tone of the meeting shifted, then before long, Trump was lecturing Zelensky about “not having the cards” and Vice President JD Vance was scolding him like an angry school teacher.
He was kicked out of the White House before he had a chance to give Trump the belt.
