Flattery, distraction and golf: world leaders dust off their Trump playbooks

Despite that visit, the UK made little headway with Trump, who pushed for controversial concessions in trade talks and later publicly called then-prime minister Theresa May “foolish” in a post on Twitter, now X. “The UK’s record of understanding and influencing Trump — based on his first term — is poor,” said Matthew Savill at the London think-tank Rusi. “A second Trump administration will have fewer senior figures in it with any sort of affinity for the UK.”