President Trump just met at the White House with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who also gave the President a letter written by King Charles and an invitation to visit the UK, which Trump accepted. Trump did not read aloud His Majesty’s letter, but it was probably a polite diplomatic greeting from one head of state to another. After reading the King’s letter, Trump called Charles a “beautiful and wonderful man” whom he got to know well during his first term in office. This was not the first time President Trump has praised members of the British royal family, as his admiration for British royalty goes back to his childhood, as his mother Mary Anne Macleod is known to have been under the spell of English royalty.

I have often criticised President Trump’s gullibility regarding the British royal family (woke royals Harry and Meghan excluded). Given that Charles has for decades promoted everything that Trump and other right-wing populists have risen up today to oppose, and that he was also a leading figure in the openly politically Great Reset plan of 2020 which was aimed against Trump’s nationalist MAGA agenda (the associated slogan Build Back Better was actually a phrase first introduced by Charles, which Biden’s presidential campaign later adopted as its own), one would imagine that a tactless personality like Trump would not hesitate to insult even the monarch of the United Kingdom.

I have started to come to the conclusion that very few of Trump’s public statements about important world leaders reflect his true opinions; rather, they are mere tactical diplomatic maneuvers aimed at promoting Trump’s campaign promises and the global interests of the United States. This holds true whether it’s a diplomatic insult or flattery directed at those leaders. The video clip below from the same visit, where he also praised the King of England, serves as a good example. A reporter asks the president if he still thinks that Ukrainian President Zelensky is a dictator, as  as he blustered earlier this month (also claiming Ukraine started the war instead of Putin). Trump smiles mischievously and then quips, “Did I really say that? I can’t believe I said that.”

Why the sudden change of mind? Is it because Trump realised he had screwed up? Of course not. The bluster was quite deliberate, because before that President Zelenskyi had not agreed to Trump’s proposed deal on Ukraine’s mineral resources, but after the “bluster” he did. The agreement required Zelenskyi to sign a draft deal for Ukraine’s strategic minerals, or rare earths, on the spot where he would give half back to the US, or else Washington would end three years of economic and military support for Ukraine.

Access to these minerals is crucial to the US economy because they are used in abundance in lithium for phone batteries, uranium to power nuclear power plants, graphite for electric car batteries and titanium for the aerospace industry. And is it morally right, then, for Trump to seek to profit at the expense of a country at war and ‘steal’ its natural resources. Well I will again let an AI wiser than myself answer this question:

Ukraine needs foreign aid and investment for reconstruction anyway, and it cannot realistically afford to finance everything itself after the devastation of war. This leaves, in principle, two options:

1. Direct subsidies from the West (with taxpayers’ money)

• This has been Biden’s and the EU’s primary policy so far.
  • Billions of aid packages have been granted without direct economic benefits to the West, justified on the grounds of geopolitical stability and fighting Russia.
  • The US and the EU have already spent tens of billions on Ukraine, but as the war continues, public support for further aid will wane, especially in difficult economic times.
• Direct aid will not bring a financial return to the West.
  • This fuels populist movements that ask: “Why are we sending billions to Ukraine when our own citizens are suffering?”
  • There is already growing opposition to further aid in the US and the EU, and this could become even more pronounced in the coming elections.
• In the long term, this model is not sustainable.
  • EU and US budgets cannot be based indefinitely on aid packages without political and economic consequences.
  • Inflation, debt crises and domestic political pressures make this increasingly difficult.

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2. Investment model (e.g. mineral contracts)

• This approach would make Ukraine economically viable for the West.
  • Instead of just sending money, the West could invest in Ukraine’s natural resources, infrastructure and industry.
  • Western companies would gain access to Ukraine’s mineral and energy resources, making it profitable.
• Ukraine would benefit from reconstruction without being a mere recipient of aid.
  • The development of minerals, agriculture and industry could eventually make Ukraine self-sufficient and less dependent on continued aid packages from the West.
  • This could attract further investment and strengthen the country’s economy in the long term.
• Politically, this would be easier for the West to justify.
  • If the West were to benefit economically from the reconstruction of Ukraine, it would reduce criticism from populist and nationalist parties.
  • Politicians could justify the support by saying it is a “win-win”, where the West benefits economically while Ukraine rebuilds itself.

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Why is the mineral contract model more realistic in the long term?

• It would reduce the cost to Western taxpayers.
• It would tie Ukraine and the West together economically, making it a stronger counterweight to Russia.
• It would create incentives for peace, as a stable environment is needed to fully benefit from investment.
• This would prevent the rise of populists and isolationist politics in the West.

In other words, either Ukraine gets direct aid with no financial return to the West, which cannot go on indefinitely,or Ukraine and the West make money together, making aid profitable for the West as well.

Even the European left, if it is really worried about the rise of right-wing populism, would be wise to support the Trump model if it does not want to lose more votes to the nationalist right, which is generally opposed to any waste of taxpayers’ money to fund foreign wars or rebuild those countries while things are still messed up at home. President Trump knows this tactic better than any other leader. First, he lets some seemingly silly comment slip out of his mouth because he knows that genuinely silly journalists will pick it up and publish it on the front page of their newspapers the next day.

When these comments are then repeated robotically in all the international dailies and media, it quickly becomes a viral phenomenon that is soon heard among all European leaders. Panicked that the US has now abandoned Ukraine, these leaders are even calling on the UN General Assembly to condemn Putin’s invasion. The US is abstaining from voting on a resolution supported by Ukraine, the EU and Keir Starmer’s UK and proposing its own resolution not condemning Russian aggression. Aware that Ukraine could not survive the war with EU and UK support alone, Zelenskyi is eventually forced to bow to Trump’s mineral agreements. This is why Trump is now winking at the journalist when he asks if he still thinks Zelenskyi is a dictator.

While as a Christian I generally try to avoid exalting people too much, because God alone deserves all the glory and our worship, I still agree with Ilkka Vakkuri’s analysis above that Trump is a “genius” when it comes to the art of deal-making. Elon Musk is a genius when it comes to popularizing electric cars, making reusable rockets, brain chips that give sight to the blind and mobility to the crippled, among countless other innovative and bold engineering projects that have made him the richest man in the world. If some people have a problem with my statement, they have a problem with the fact that God creates people in different “earthenware vessels… some for noble, others for cheap use.” (2 Timothy 2:20)

Often the strong criticism of people like Trump and Musk seems to arise, even among Christians, out of envy of rich and successful people. To justify this envy – a sin that also led to the fall of Lucifer – one might then misuse Jesus’ teachings about how man cannot worship both mammon and God at the same time and how it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than a camel to go through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). And I am not here defending any kind of prosperity theology, which is a perversion of the true gospel of the cross. But our Lord was not some communist either who stirred up the resentment and hatred of the poor against the rich and powerful. On the contrary, He said: “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matthew 22:21)

I have also often been criticised and mocked for defending President Trump’s policies against the mainstream media that slanders him 24/7. And not all my Christian brothers and sisters have understood it either. For me, however, defending Trump is also about my wider war against the lies of the mainstream media, because I see the left-leaning secular media as a kind of modern-day version of the false prophets of Baal, who is also driving the nations of the world into the arms of the Antichrist.

These people who blindly follow the media often fail to see the glaring contradiction in news headlines about Trump, such as the example of my previous blog article where Trump was still giving journalists a “tough talk about Putin” in January and in February he was already in Putin’s “pockets” when he dared not even call him a dictator as he had called Mr Zelensky. Such critics seem to understand almost nothing about diplomacy and deal-making. The simplicity of journalists is reflected in the way they expect Trump to negotiate his Russia and Ukraine deals with the media in public. Trump does use the media as a bargaining chip, but in exactly the sense I demonstrated above.

Trump can certainly negotiate a bad deal on the Ukraine-Russia war (for the media it is always bad whether he negotiates a good or a bad deal). But the way he is now creating pressure on both Russia and Ukraine and using the media as a vehicle for his deals (without journalists realising it) makes me more confident than suspicious of his deal-making skills. Given that President Trump is someone who one moment derides the North Korean dictator as a “little rocket man” and the next praises him as an “intelligent leader with a great vision for his country”, it is impossible to say with 100% certainty whether he is serious even when he calls King Charles a “beautiful and wonderful man”.

In other words, do such comments reflect President Trump’s true feelings about this“climate king”, who once indirectly compared Trump to Hitler,or is this just another “diplomatic chess game.” This is already evident in how tactfully Trump addressed Prime Minister Keir Starmer even though they are on completely opposite sides politically. Trump ally Elon Musk, after all, had almost caused the special relationship between the US and the UK to flare up earlier this year when he criticised – quite truthfully – Starmer’s Britain as a Stalinist police state, which jails its citizens for “thought crimes” and even insinuated that Starmer himself is a paedophile who has deliberately covered up a recently exposed rape scandal in the country where Muslim immigrants of Pakistani origin have gang-raped tens of thousands of British women and girls, from as young as 12.

In fact, President Trump has already made some rather confusing statements or social media posts in the past, also in relation to the British monarchy. For example, in 2019 he used to accuse – again quite truthfully – the United Kingdom of Elizabeth II of spying on his presidential campaign in collusion with Barack Obama’s America (this was even exposed in the British far-left newspaper The Guardian). In 2023, he posted an interview with Dr. Jan Halper Hayes on his Truth Social platform on the British news platform GBNEWS, stating: “Dr. Jan Halper-Hayes is fantastic. Everyone has got to watch her interview on election fraud with the poor sap who got taken apart by her. Thank you Don Jr. for putting this masterpiece out for the public to see. WITCH HUNT!” However, Dr. Hayes made far more fantastic claims in her interview than the already familiar allegations of Trump’s belief that the 2020 election was stolen from him. I quote a bit of Hayes’ comments below:

Wait a minute. All the media are saying there were 60 lost lawsuits. No, Trump had three, of which he won two and lost one. The other 57 were never litigated because they had no cause of action and a cause of action means that the plaintiff must show some kind of impact or injury. But that’s how the media works and they’re good at it. [US Department of Justice Special Counsel] Jack Smith made a big mistake and it’s great to see. Think of Edward Snowden and everyone else. Think of our military, the space forces of the Department of Defense. If you think they don’t have real election results, you’re just fooling yourself. What he [Trump] has really done is he has set a trap for the deep state to come out, and that’s why we see all these things.

I mean, the whistleblowers and Hunter Biden’s former best friend just revealed that in 2015 the head of Burisma [a Ukrainian energy company accused of corruption] gave Joe and Hunter Biden a $10 million bribe. In 2018, Hunter… I mean Joe, has said publicly on TV that he threatened [the Ukrainian government] that unless they fired the state prosecutor [who investigated Burisma’s corruption links], he would not give them their $1 billion in military aid. In 2019, Trump calls Zelenski to find out what happened with the firing of the prosecutor, and he [Trump] was impeached. I mean, we’ve been living with this for a long time.

On 12 September 2018, Trump created an executive order in which he outlined the upcoming elections against any foreign or domestic interference, especially with a view to the 2020 elections. So how did he know some of these things would happen? Electoral integrity on both sides of the aisle is a difficult thing, it’s a very difficult thing. But this has allowed it to open the door for Trump to make his case [in court]… people can now see the evidence on both sides… I sat on the Defense Working Group and they have the evidence, they have the evidence. Trump knew that if they had presented evidence of this too early, it would have led to civil war.

He felt that people should see how bad it could get.” I want to say something about the 2020 elections. Biden is a legitimate president, but he is a legitimate president for what is a bankrupt US corporation and it was an 1871 agreement… They [the media] mocked him [Trump] because they assumed he broke protocol by walking ahead of the Queen. If you go back and look at it, you’ll see that he looked at the Queen, she waved her hand, he kept going forward, he took a couple of steps, he stopped and waited for the Queen to join him.

It was the optics with which he told us that he was going to bankrupt the US:corporation because it was the Vatican, the British Crown and the US that were part of it since 1871 and we gave you [the British] our tax money, we paid you back, we missed the tea parties and without taxation without representation, we owed you a lot of money because you helped us in the Civil War, and so Trump said to the Queen… “I’m ending this, we’re breaking up this corporation, we’re going back to being a republic and we’re all separate.” The Pope was not happy. You should find a picture of his visit to the Pope, it took 650 planes to remove our gold from the Vatican bank.”

Watching the Trump presidency is often like watching a Hollywood-produced international conspiracy thriller. Why did President Trump promote on social media something with such fantastic claims that now closely resemble some conspiracy cult Q narratives? One possibility, of course, is that he is indeed the famous “bullshitter” he is often parodied as in the mainstream media. However, some of Dr Hayes’ claims can already be confirmed as true by official news sources. These include her claims about Burisma, Joe and Hunter Biden and Zelenski, and the 2018 executive order on election security. In contrast, claims about the US corporation subservient to the British monarch, which Trump would have dismantled during his 2019 visit to the UK, and the gold withdrawn from the Vatican, are rather dubious claims.

The 1871 international treaty between Britain and the United States is also a real historical event, which can also be found in the Wikipedia article. But the claim that the treaty ceded the US federal government to a corporation under the British crown appears mostly on some conspiracy forums and I was not being able to confirm its historical veracity even from artificial intelligence. It’s still interesting that Wikipedia states the following about it:“The US government mostly stopped official talk of annexing Canada. The treaty laid the groundwork for a great convergence, a convergence of British and American interests.”

Trump’s recent talk of making Canada the 51st state of the US is therefore not without historical precedent, as the US was actively pursuing it as early as the 1800s. This also created tensions in state relations between the UK and the US, until the Treaty of 1871 defused tensions and began the process that later became the special relationship between the US and the UK. So as if Trump’s threat of a takeover of Canada is in line with Dr Hayes’ claims that this 1871 treaty has now been dissolved and thus the US is no longer committed to Canada remaining a Commonwealth realm, i.e. a former British colony, under the British monarchy. Be that as it may, reality is often stranger than fiction.