Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Trump’s reach

The US President’s tour of Asia has only enhanced his reputation

It’s been a miserable two weeks for our Foreign Secretary. Not only did Boris Johnson trip up over the British woman held in Iran; not only did he find himself accused of puppeteering Theresa May to further his and Michael Gove’s Brexit ambitions; he also committed the most grievous PR sin any politician can commit: he praised Donald Trump in public. ‘What you’ve got to realise is that the American President is just one of the huge, great global brands,’ Boris told Fox & Friends. ‘He is penetrating corners of the global consciousness that I think few other presidents have ever done.’

That made people very cross. The Labour MP David Lammy called Johnson an ‘odious arse-kisser’ and countless others echoed that sentiment. Boris was a brown-nose, a buffoon, a national disgrace, and so on.

What nobody admitted was that Boris had, as he so often does, said something true. Donald Trump is a phenomenon the like of which the world has never seen, and while most political analysts are still struggling to accept his presidency, the rest of humanity is fast coming to terms with it. His approval rating at home hit 46 per cent this week, according to a Rasmussen survey, up from 38 per cent in August.

Abroad, too, after a very poor start, his stock is on the rise. His tour of Asia, which ended this week, is the first major foreign policy success of his presidency. Trump visited Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines without a major hitch. If 80 per cent of diplomacy is just showing up, Trump did that and more. He has improved his reputation in the region enormously.

Trump seems to connect with Asians in a way that Barack Obama never could.

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