WhatsApp and clown shoes: What does diplomacy look like under Trump?

About twenty years ago, part of my job included briefing leaders of organisations about the benefits and pitfalls of starting to use a newish thing known as social media. Their questions ranged from “what is it?" to “why should we bother?”. 

Outside the early adopters, many sectors were cautious and felt it was unnecessary time, energy and money. These discussions were much like the “why do we need a website?” ones I was having in the years prior. 

Wind forward six months or a year, and the phone would inevitably ring requesting urgent social media training or a revised communications policy to include social media, usually in direct response to a reputational issue that started online, and now the CEO was interested.  

I have long pitied the people in the White House whose responsibilities may include ‘advising’ Donald Trump on his use of social media. That line in the job description went a long time ago I expect.  

The President’s use of social media to bypass the usual diplomatic channels reached a new high-water mark overnight, when Trump shared DMs received from a variety of European leaders. These included exchanges with President Macron who said: “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland”. Hours earlier the French leader had declined the invitation to join Washington’s Board of Peace. Trump’s response to the press was “Well, nobody wants him because he’s going to be out of office very soon”. 

Trump’s posts are just what we see of how he operates. For those around him, in his Cabinet, and across the diplomatic service, every day and night is continual game of Whack-A-Mole. A position is agreed and actions signed off at the end of the meeting, then within minutes a post appears kicking the whole thing over, complete with personal slurs, historical inaccuracies and petty point scoring.  

Worryingly, this disregard for international law and diplomacy seems to be losing its shock value as every day there is something new, worse than the day before. The President wants to run the world like a business, but who would want to work for a business like that? 

The reports of the President’s behaviour towards JD Vance, Vice President, and Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, are truly shocking. He describes them as kids, halting a meeting to lambast both men about their “shitty shoes”. He then made them wear new pairs he ordered for them that were several sizes too big. The whole humiliating scenario feels like it could be another episode of The Simpsons, again with Trump, but featuring Krusty the Clown’s footwear. In this cartoon, maybe the pair would order the President a much-needed well-fitted suit in response.  

In Hamlet, Shakespeare paints a picture of the incredible potential of humanity, then on reflection concludes that man is insignificant and worthless, expressed in the lines “What a piece of work is a man…quintessence of dust”.  
 
I’ll be thinking of these words whilst watching the continued diplomatic carnage unfold at future White House press conferences.