Kathrine Frich
The president seemed completely surprised by a basic trade fact.
When you spend decades building a career in foreign policy, you expect the people at the top to grasp the basics.
Sometimes, a single meeting proves that assumption wrong. One short conversation was all it took for a veteran diplomat to walk away.
A surprising demand
HuffPost reported that former American ambassador to Panama John Feeley recently shared the story of his only meeting with Donald Trump.
Speaking on The Guardian’s “Stateside” podcast, the diplomat detailed the June 2017 encounter.
Feeley recalled the exact moment his faith in the job vanished, noting that the president opened their discussion with a blunt demand.
“So you’re my ambassador in Panama. What do we get from Panama?” Trump asked, according to Feeley.
Skipping the jargon
The question stunned the official. Panama has just 4.5 million citizens and no military, while the United States holds massive global power.
Feeley decided to drop the standard political talk.
He told host Kai Wright that he shifted into plain language to explain the economic benefits.
The diplomat pointed out how the famous canal allows cheap shipping. Electronics like televisions and phones travel from Asian factories to American ports at a massive discount.
The breaking point
The president seemed completely surprised by this basic trade fact. Trump looked at him and said, “‘Huh, who knew?'”
“I kid you not, man. That’s what he said, ‘Who knew?'” Feeley told the podcast, laughing at the memory.
Yet the reality behind the joke pushed the official to quit. He announced his resignation just a few months later, leaving his post entirely by early 2018.
The brief exchange cemented his “unease about continuing to be his personal representative,” Feeley explained.
A superficial view
After thirty years working in the region, Feeley felt deeply troubled by the administration’s narrow focus.
The former official did not hold back his harsh criticism of the Republican leader.
“This is a man who is so fundamentally ignorant, who is surrounded by people who are not ignorant, but who in their presentation towards a region that I dedicated about 30 years of my life to, have such a fundamentally superficial view,” he stated.
He noted that the entire foreign policy approach felt purely transactional, boiling down to one thought: “‘What do we get from these guys?'”
Sources: HuffPost, The Guardian
