The words “private and confidential” have never meant a great deal to Donald Trump. In his discussions with other world leaders, he has never operated much of a filter, happy to provide not just the facts of a conversation but also its content and tone, with descriptions all the way from beautiful to nasty.
But it is a new development (barring bits of mildly solicitous correspondence from Volodymyr Zelenskyy last year) for him to simply copy and paste the entirety of private messages on to social media, as he did in the case of Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to set up a G7 meeting in Paris to discuss Greenland, Ukraine and Syria.
The publication of Macron’s message was designed to hurt, just as a message attacking Keir Starmer was intended to wound. Fortunately for Macron, proposing a G7 meeting – a typically bold Macron initiative – did not reveal him saying one thing in public and something else in private. The views he expressed on Greenland, Syria, Iran and the need to work in tandem were concisely, if slightly fawningly, expressed and largely in line with his public views.
The episode again underlines that Trump’s methods remove the basic modicum of trust required for two leaders to cooperate efficiently. One leader tries to operate by the established rules of diplomatic efficiency. Trump blows them up.
In this case, Trump may have been annoyed with Macron, a man he enjoys belittling, because the French president had refused an offer of a seat on his board of peace; a refusal that threatens to unravel his plan to supplant the United Nations with a body he alone controls.
Trump may also have been annoyed earlier in the week by the leak of his own message to the prime minister of Norway, Jonas Gahr Støre, saying he no longer felt an obligation to think only of peace after being snubbed for the Nobel peace prize.
But the release of the Macron message was not just an act of reprisal or attention seeking. It is about Trump using mass communication as a way to intimidate and destabilise his rivals, by dominating the flow of information and changing the conventions.
The bland readout of a meeting between two leaders, drafted by officials and designed to obscure the content, is substituted with the raw data. Whitehall’s 30-year rule, barring the disclosure of British government documents for three decades after they were written, replaced by the 30-minute rule.
As the French author Philippe Corbé points out in his new book Weapons of Mass Distraction: “No president had ever achieved such omnipresence. In this fractured country, it gives him a singular power. It wasn’t money that propelled him but conversation. The creation of chaos is not an accidental byproduct of Trump, it is the method. Every void is filled with a provocation. He lights more fires than can be put out day after day, he cuts through the fog, saturates the ambient noise.”
Indeed, Trump’s whole career is built around transgressing norms and avoiding the consequences. Aged 80, diplomatic niceties are the least of his constraints.
There are risks in this. Iron is entering the soul of his one-time allies, infuriated by the discourtesy and sometimes the humiliation of needing to turn their cheek once again. Leaders at some point need to show to their electorates, and themselves, that they can preserve their dignity and self-respect.
The arteries of frank exchange may dry up if there is an expectation that every exchange will be posted on Truth Social. Intelligence agencies will be guarded in handing over information if Trump is likely to have access to the names of agents or their sources. Yet this is a time when dialogue is needed more than ever, which was the underlying purpose of Macron’s message.
Trump respects some world leaders but he admits to trusting no one, not even Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and the sentiment is requited. No one trusts him. They only fear him and his unpredictable, unfiltered psychology.
In fact, it is fair to say Trump seems no longer interested in privacy. In his first term he used to worry about leaks. In his second term there are no quiet reflective policy away-days. Instead, the doors have been flung open and it is government by spectacle. The presidency is all out there – in one long media encounter, on a plane, in the White House or on social media. As a result, there is nothing left to leak.
