Here’s a classic Trump moment: praising Liberian President Joseph Boakai’s “beautiful English” like it’s some kind of surprise. Spoiler alert — Liberia’s English isn’t just “beautiful” by accident. This Time article by Chad de Guzman digs into the awkward mix of language, history, and cluelessness wrapped up in Trump’s comment. Perfect reading if you’re into how language and identity clash (and how some politicians still can’t get it right).
Donald Trump has yet to visit Africa as President. But he’s certainly left an impression.
In his first term, Trump angered the continent’s leaders and public when he reportedly referred to Haiti and African nations as “sh-thole countries.” Amid blowback, Trump denied using the specific phrase, while Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was present in the closed-door meeting where the remark was supposedly uttered, told media at the time that Trump made “hate-filled, vile and racist” comments “and he said them repeatedly.”
In his second term so far, Trump has been criticized for championing false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa, granting refugee privileges to white Afrikaners while implementing new travel restrictions that inexplicably seem to target several majority-Black African nations.
He’s also gutted humanitarian assistance to the continent. Africa was one of the biggest recipients of support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and millions of Africans are expected to die as a result of the agency’s dismantling.
To many, these moves seemed reflective of Trump’s apparent disregard for the continent.
But Africa, in the words of a Brookings Institution research paper from January, “is increasingly recognized as the next frontier for global economic growth. Its potential is vast, characterized by diverse natural resources, a burgeoning youth population, and untapped innovation.”
And in recent years it’s also become a battleground for global influence in the U.S.-China geopolitical rivalry—a battleground on which analysts say China appears to be winning through consistent development investment, security engagement, and media charm.
“Chinese success in Africa is perhaps partly due to the failure of US foreign policy, which ranges from outright disrespect to moralistic treatment,” wrote Chinese political scientist Wenfang Tang in the South China Morning Post in 2024, compared to “the Chinese approach of treating Africans as comrades and business partners.”
In an effort to combat China’s growing influence and set the U.S.-Africa relationship on a stronger footing, Trump invited his counterparts from Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal to the White House on Wednesday to discuss commercial opportunities as part of a diplomatic pivot he characterized as “from aid to trade.”
“We treat Africa far better than China or anybody else,” Trump asserted during the meeting.
As many of the African leaders expressed gratitude for the invite, Trump appeared surprised when Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai spoke. “We want to work with the United States in peace and security within the region because we are committed to that and we just want to thank you so much for this opportunity,” Boakai said.
In turn, Trump responded: “Thank you. And such good English. Such beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated? Where?”
When Boakai answered that he learned the language in Liberia, Trump responded: “That’s very interesting. Beautiful English! I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well.”
The comment immediately drew blowback from outside observers.
An unnamed Liberian diplomat told CNN that he found it “a bit condescending.” U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D, Texas) said it was “peak ignorance” in a post on X. “Trump never misses an opportunity to be racist and wrong, and every day he finds a new way to be embarrassing,” Crockett wrote. “I’m pretty sure being blatantly offensive is not how you go about conducting diplomacy.”
English is the official language of Liberia, a country of 5 million people on Africa’s western coast that was founded in 1822 by the American Colonization Society (ACS), which aimed to resettle freed slaves, and declared independence in 1847.
In a statement, the White House said the remark deemed offensive by some was a “heartfelt compliment.”
While Trump has repeatedly shown a preference for English, signing an executive order in March to make it the official language of the U.S., it’s not the first time Trump has commented on how it’s spoken.
“What a beautiful accent,” he told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in February.
In mid-February, he bypassed an Indian reporter’s question after remarking, “I can’t understand a word he’s saying. It’s the accent. It’s a little bit tough for me to hear that.”
“It’s a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent,” he told an Afghan reporter earlier the same month, twice again using what seems to be his favorite adjective. “The only problem is I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
And just last month, Trump told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, “you speak such good English … very good, very good.”
Linguistics researchers have said that Trump’s attitudes—and everyone’s, really—toward accents tend to reflect the listener’s biases about the speaker more than any objective qualities to the speech.
“It’s pretty much universal,” sociophonetician Nicole Holliday told the Washington Post in 2016. “You can go anywhere in the world and ask who speaks the ‘bad’ version of the language — and invariably, it’s the people who are marginalized, who are rural, poor, or belong to religious minorities.”
“The attitude we have about foreign accents is affected by our social knowledge of a person, their accent and where they come from,” Nicole Rosen, a language interactions professor at the University of Manitoba, wrote in The Conversation earlier this year, suggesting that dynamic may have been reflected in Trump’s praise of European leaders’ English in contrast to his dismissal of South Asian and Middle Eastern journalists’ English.
Rosen also noted that studies show that people “tend to rate their own dialects as very pleasant.”
It may be for that reason that Trump reacted positively to hearing Boakai speak—and why Boakai himself seemed unbothered by Trump’s reaction.
“We know that English has different accents and forms, and so him picking up the distinct intonation that has its roots in American English for us was just recognizing a familiar English version,” Liberia’s Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow Nyanti told CNN. “What President Trump heard distinctly was the American influence on our English in Liberia, and the Liberian President is not offended by that.”
