Foreign leaders turn the Trump sycophancy up to 11

It’s not exactly news that foreign leaders – much like their counterparts in the United States – have concluded that flattery is a necessary prerequisite to doing business with President Donald Trump.

In his first term, Trump seemed practically smitten by the “love letters” he received from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Other leaders pulled out all the stops to make him feel special. But even against that backdrop, we’ve entered new and striking territory. As Trump has undertaken a much more transparently transactional second term and busted a series of norms while politicizing his office, it seems foreign leaders have taken notice of the new paradigm.

So they’ve turned the obsequiousness up to 11. It seems no amount of sycophancy is deemed over the top, no accolade too premature.

On Wednesday, this took the form of multiple African leaders, expressing support, with some prompting, for Trump to receive his much-coveted Nobel Peace Prize.

“I can guarantee you that Mauritania would never be opposed to President Trump receiving a Nobel Peace Prize,” said the president of that country, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, during a lunch at the White House.

“Of course we are” supportive of Trump winning the prize, Guinea-Bissau’s President Umaro Sissoco Embaló said.

Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye called it “a deserved prize.”

“I think that President Trump deserves it for all the efforts that he’s worked on,” Gabonese President Brice Oligui Nguema said. Nguema cited a peace deal the Trump administration has brokered between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.