Tips for Leaders Meeting Trump: Keep It Short and Give Him a Win -<br />By PETER BAKERMAY 18, 2017<br />WASHINGTON — As Saudi Arabia’s leaders prepared to make a pitch to the White House for a visit by President Trump, a PowerPoint presentation<br />was put together complete with slides describing Saudi demographics, investments in the United States and ambitious plans for reform.<br />Just this week, he hosted at the White House the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates, the president of Turkey<br />and the president of Colombia, while talking by phone with leaders like King Abdullah II of Jordan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.<br />“He values personal relationships,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia said after<br />a personal meeting in New York where the two men smoothed over an initial testy phone call.<br />During his first 100 days in office, he hosted 16 meetings with foreign leaders and, as of Monday, had made 76 phone calls to 43 leaders.<br />And the British ended up tutoring the Trump team on how to choreograph a foreign leader visit — the<br />format for meetings, who would be in which one, how they would make statements to the media.<br />The Saudis scored their own coup by persuading Mr. Trump to make Saudi Arabia his first foreign destination as president, beating Mexico<br />and Canada, which have traded that honor since the 1970s.<br />That’s just been his business style.”<br />The British lapped the field by maneuvering to make Mrs. May the first foreign leader to meet with Mr. Trump after the inauguration.
