United States President Donald J. Trump has a very busy schedule at the Group of 20 (G-20) Summit taking place at Humburg, Germany. He has back-to-back meetings scheduled with various heads of state, including Singapore Prime Minster Lee Hsien Loong (PM Lee) and Indonesia President Joko Widodo (Jokowi).
Trump shared his full schedule on his Facebook:
President Donald J. Trump‘s schedule for Saturday, July 8th (beginning 9:00AM LOCAL/3:00AM EDT):
Expanded meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom
Women’s Entrepreneurship Finance Event
G-20 Summit Leaders Working Session III
Expanded meeting with President Joko Widodo of Indonesia
Expanded meeting with the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore
G-20 Summit Working Lunch
Expanded meeting with Prime Minister Shinzō Abe of Japan
G-20 Summit Closing Session
Expanded meeting with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China
Returns to Washington, D.C.
As you can see, he had a meeting with Jokowi, right after our dear PM Lee who will be meeting Trump for the first time. Maybe it’s because all Asians look alike to Trump and his staffer or more likely so, they are just too overwhelmed with the busy schedule, a wrong post went out on Trump’s official Instagram account, captioning his meeting with PM Lee as a meeting with Jokowi:
The post has since been corrected:
Trump has 7.1 million followers on his Instagram and it didn’t take long for many eagle-eyed netizens to spot the mistake. The mistake was quickly covered across Indonesia media from the like of CNN Indonesia and Detik.com:
Trump met with Japan Prime Minister Shinzō Abe and China President Xi Jinping after meeting the two Southeast Asian leaders. It’s a good thing he didn’t mix up these other two. The two countries have a combined GDP of over 15 trillion USD, close to United States’ 17 trillion (versus the 1 trillion plus USD for Singapore and Indonesia combined).
Jokes aside, the meeting was a significant one for Singapore, given it is PM Lee’s first ever meeting with Trump. Here’s their full exchange, released by the White House press office:
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, everybody. The Prime Minister of Singapore — we’re very close, the relationship is very close, and we expect to do some excellent things together in many ways. And we have a very big relationship now. It will probably get much bigger. And I thank you very much. Thank you.
PRIME MINISTER LEE: Well, thank you, Mr. President. We have many things going on with the U.S. and we hope to do more under your administration.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Very good. I’m sure we will.
PRIME MINISTER LEE: Thank you.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you.
The full video of the encounter via Channel NewsAsia:
If you were wondering about Trump and PM Lee’s handshake, it went well. PM Lee shook Trump’s hand for a grand total of 4 seconds (and it looks like a firm and steady one).
It is good to see that our dear prime minister has regained his usual composure and confidence after the recent public fallout with his two younger siblings on social media.
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