Prime Minister,
You are meeting President Trump face to face for the first time at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) next week. I wanted to share four rules for making the encounter a success.
1. This is reality diplomacy
I don’t have to tell you how important this is – the whole world will be watching. The U.S. midterms are weeks away and President Trump is in full campaign mode. Meeting him has always been a little different from meeting other presidents: you need to remember he made his name as a celebrity on reality TV before entering politics. That influences his whole style.
You have seen how he handles meetings with foreign leaders. Sometimes it’s like ‘The Apprentice USA’ where Donald Trump, still only a property developer, relished saying “You’re fired!” Other times it’s more ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ with President Trump as a witty, and rather camp, compere – gay comedian Bransen Gates has done a hilarious lip-sync of Trump’s meeting with President Peña of Paraguay.
The point is that when you meet President Trump it’s a performance – a kind of reality diplomacy in which you have to impose your presence because he will be testing you, just as if you were on a reality TV show.