If this generation had not witnessed the election of Donald Trump a second time as United States president late last year and experienced his ignoble approach to politics and diplomacy, they would have died with a smile on their faces convinced that America was infallible, invincible, thoroughbred, and an exemplar of all that is noble. In his first term, which was truncated by the mitigating election of Joe Biden, President Trump did his best to abridge his worst instincts and habits. He was of course no less nasty and insufferable, but he tried his best not to extend his brutishness beyond American borders. Even when he did, it was half-hearted and unconvincing, with many analysts still giving him the benefit of the doubt. Barely a hundred days into his second term, he has shown without a shred of doubt that no one, no matter how gifted, can plumb the depths of his nastiness.
In one area, he has demonstrated he cannot be bettered: he is condescending to heads of states, except the autocrats among them. And he has fiendishly displayed the art of diplomatic ambush of the meanest kind. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was the first to taste of President Trump’s galling style during a visit to the White House two months ago to solicit for help in the war against Russia. Instead, he was ambushed, ridiculed, taunted and even haunted out of the Oval Office. He held his own quite alright, but because he was the one who needed help, he left the US in unquenchable grief. It began inauspiciously as President Trump baited his visitor; then when it seemed Mr Zelensky would ride the storm with surprising eloquence and logic that far outweighed and bettered the performance of the incoherent US president, a planted and groveling newsman asked a dismaying question about the visitor’s ‘inappropriate dressing’. Even this, too, the Ukrainian president tackled with aplomb. Sensing their quarry was getting away with a stellar performance, Vice President J.D. Vance weighed in on cue with a nasty comment to a visiting head of state no vice president was ever thought capable of. The ambush of February 2025 was complete.
Barely three months later, as if thirsty for more blood, another ambush has been sprung against visiting South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa who asked for and received an invitation to visit the US to try and convince President Trump that no White genocide ever took place in South Africa nor was any contemplated. In visiting the White House after the Zelensky debacle, Mr Ramaphosa obviously reposed too much confidence in his composure, eloquence and the logical unassailability of his position regarding allegations of state-sponsored crime. It was a big mistake. The problem Mr Zelensky encountered with President Trump was not that he did not have a similarly unassailable position nor was he devoid of eloquence and poise, particularly under fire. The Ukrainian president’s problem, Mr Ramaphosa should have known, was that Mr Trump resorts to despicable tactics when he encounters his betters, or when he is losing an argument. More, Mr Trump has a closed mind and tunnel vision of diplomacy: once he makes up his mind, often without any spadework, he is both unmovable and implacable.
But Mr Ramaphosa, perhaps grieving over the fallacies Mr Trump had peddled regarding an inexistent White genocide, thought that if he went to the White House armed with facts and truths, his host would relent. Alas, his host does not work with facts and has contempt for truths; he is fascinated by lies and fabrications. The more the South African president displayed profundity, the surlier the US president became, until finally he sprung the said ambush using wholly tendentious videos and photographs depicting a so-called genocidal grave. Mr Ramaphosa was stupefied in a way Mr Zelensky, with his perfect and combative ripostes, was not. The South African was so badgered with falsehoods concocted in the US that he even began to doubt himself, asking tremulously at a brief point whether Mr Trump had verified the so-called genocidal graves. The American president simply waved off Mr Ramaphosa’s queries, for he had made up his mind, and would not and indeed could not be flustered by any doubts or facts to the contrary. It was not until later when he addressed the press unencumbered by the antics of his host that the dazed South African president found his voice. Of course, on the whole, he conducted himself excellently well, and gave a great, not just a good, account of himself. But with Mr Trump, it is futile to argue armed with facts.
More, with the American president, it is futile to visit him except you are an unremitting autocrat he had taken a fancy to, or a gift-bearing and sinister head of state. After the Zelensky and Ramaphosa debacles, Mr Trump’s appalling tactics have been made very clear and unmistakable to the world. Not too many stouthearted presidents would be willing to visit the White House henceforth. Here, Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu should learn a lesson. He should give the American president a wide berth, not out of fear, but because of common sense. It will be pointless dealing with such a man at close quarters. There will be nothing President Tinubu can say or show to convince Mr Trump that Nigeria is not carrying out genocide against Christians, not even if the Nigerian president were to show proof that his cabinet and military commanders are, to the last man, Christians. Mr Trump will simply goad a nasty reporter to ask the Nigerian president a tricky and provocative question, and then all hell would break loose. Not only should President Tinubu give President Trump a wide berth, he should also proactively put machinery in motion to ensure that for the four years the American president would hold sway in Washington, the Nigerian president should never be invited. Better safe than sorry. As the English say, discretion is the better part of valour.
By Palladium @TheNation
