US President Donald Trump created an awkward moment this Wednesday during his meeting in Washington with the leaders of Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Gabon when he praised his Liberian counterpart, Joseph Boakai, for his “good English,” the African country’s official language.
“What good English!” the White House resident remarked after the Liberian president concluded his remarks. “Where did you learn to speak so well?” he asked, insisting and rephrasing the question up to three more times, according to the Washington Post, before asking if it was in Liberia.
The Liberian leader responded, twice, “yes, sir,” confirming to his American counterpart a situation that the latter considered “very interesting.” “It’s a beautiful language. There are people at this table who don’t speak it that well,” Trump asserted.
The unusual questioning led Boakai to laugh politely, without mentioning that English is the official language of Liberia, a country named after the American Colonization Society, which chose the land in 1822 as the place to send freed African-American slaves.
The Liberian was the only native English speaker of the five West African leaders who attended the meeting with the US president, a summit that also presented another rare moment in high-level international politics.
After several of the invited leaders spoke, Trump sought to speed things up, citing “a very tight schedule.” “If you could just say your name and your country, that would be great,” he declared.
However, the US president’s interest in the length of his meeting seemed to change after some of the leaders present stated that the White House resident deserves the Nobel Peace Prize—for which he was nominated this week by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I didn’t know they were going to treat me so well,” Trump remarked at the time. “This is great. We could do this all day.”
The summit, which focused on US trade relations with Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Gabon, saw more admiring remarks from Trump about these countries and Africa more broadly. “Africa has great economic potential,” the Republican tycoon said, describing the countries as “vibrant places with very valuable lands, magnificent minerals, large oil fields, and wonderful people.”
