President Donald Trump just finished his third week in office, but he isn’t done rolling out the red carpet.
Trump has already hosted two key allies at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, with at least three other foreign leaders slated to visit by month’s end. Former President Joe Biden‘s first visit from a foreign ally came in April 2021, when former Japanese leader Yoshihide Suga stopped by the White House.
On Tuesday, Trump will host King Abdullah II of Jordan, followed by a visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer will also visit Trump at the White House in February.
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This all comes after Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, Argentine President Javier Milei, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni all attended his 2025 inauguration, the first time foreign leaders were present for the presidential swearing-in ceremony. Furthermore, Trump said Friday that he’ll likely meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week and plans to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin soon to mediate an end to their three-year-long war.
Top White House aides say this revolving door of heads of state is sending a clear message to the world: Trump is back, and the White House is open for business.
“President Trump was right: Everybody wants to be his friend,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told the Washington Examiner. “And world leaders know that America is back under his leadership.”
Jeffrey McCall, a professor of political communications at DePauw University, told the Washington Examiner that these visits make Trump appear “active and engaged.”
“[Trump] intends to be a key player on the world stage,” he said in an interview. “That Trump has managed these high-profile visits from key American allies in just the third week of this term suggests an urgency to get Trump’s foreign policy up to speed and on Trump’s terms.”
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Peter Loge, the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication and a professor at George Washington University, gave a more cynical assessment of Trump’s schedule.
“All presidents use the White House and the pomp of state events to persuade foreign leaders, and foreign leaders always try to meet with the U.S. president to show their support. Trump appears to be more eager to receive shallow flattery than his predecessors, and he has a history of being nice to people who say nice things about him,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Donald Trump is about Donald Trump. He got rich marketing his name. That people pay attention to his name matters to him.”
The president made significant news while hosting both Netanyahu and Ishiba, some of which appeared to catch even White House staff by surprise.
During his press conference with Netanyahu, Trump announced his plan for a long-term takeover of the Gaza Strip. National security aides confirmed the policy to have been under discussion ahead of the prime minister’s visit, but two White House staffers told the Washington Examiner they didn’t know Trump had already made up his mind until he said it on live television.
Ishiba’s visit saw Trump declare that Nippon Steel would drop its bid to purchase U.S. Steel and instead “invest heavily” in the Pittsburgh-based company, ensuring it remains under U.S. ownership in accordance with Trump’s wishes.
Senior White House officials, granted anonymity to discuss the strategy behind Trump’s social schedule, told the Washington Examiner that the dignitary pop-ins are helping them “flood the zone” in terms of media coverage, not to mention stressing the benefits leaders stand to receive if they simply engage Trump at the negotiating table.
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“Every time a new leader comes here, they bring their own press corps along with them. That’s more eyeballs on the president and the strength our team is bringing back to the White House,” one aide claimed.
A second aide added that Trump’s high-profile guests, and the news the president is making during their visits, forces media outlets to focus on subjects beyond the “typical outrage” that has characterized media coverage of Trump’s political career.
Still, experts don’t fully buy that Trump’s focus on foreign policy is drowning out negative coverage of his domestic agenda.
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“These events don’t distract totally from the more controversial aspects of Trump’s presidency so far, such as the DOGE process and deportation efforts, but they do add other perspectives to the news agenda that must be covered,” McCall said. “Trump’s image handlers are certainly keeping him front and center of the news agenda.”
“Presidents are expected to meet with foreign leaders and host them at the White House. Musk and his crew, claims to kick Palestinians out of Gaza to turn it into a resort, and so on are news because they are unexpected,” Loge added. “Presidents meeting with other leaders isn’t new, so it isn’t news. Presidents giving billionaires free rein of government computers and closing down agencies that help our allies and fight world hunger and disease is new, and it is very newsworthy.”
