Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands at a state banquet at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, May 14, 2026.
Biographer Michael Wolff walked through the knots the White House staff must untangle as they try to get President Donald Trump to focus on tangible outcomes in meetings with foreign leaders.
Over the past week, Trump welcomed China's leader, Xi Jinping, and it appeared their activities were centered around the president showing off his construction, his military and what appeared to be his first trip to the National Archives as president. Meanwhile, the visit from Xi was said to be a "summit," which would focus on trade, avoiding a crisis with Taiwan, discussions over minerals, market access, guardrails for artificial intelligence and arms control.
Trump’s approach to meeting foreign leaders puts his aversion to detailed briefings on full display at a time of high-stakes diplomacy. It's a "difficult moment for a president" who must hold a lot of information in their brain about customs and gestures all while remembering the specifics about policy and intelligence about the country.
"You've got to know what you're talking about," said Wolff. "If you don't know what you're talking about, you know, you're giving away the store."
Wolff told The Daily Beast's Joanna Coles, "Trump goes into these meetings. He can't — he refuses to look at the briefing books, refuses to have extensive conversations about the issues at hand. Doesn't care, I suppose. Doesn't know what he's talking about.
It's all, 'I can handle it. I'm good.' He is always saying, 'I'm really good with this.' And then he goes into these meetings and all it is, is flattery. Him flattering the other side and the other side, I think very clearly, taking — understanding what they can get by this guy."
He confessed, "I'm trying to circumvent using the word buffoon, but I think that's what they see him as. I think they're like, oh my God."
Traditionally, there would be weeks of preparation for such an event.
"But if Trump is an information phobe, as you say, then how did they slim it down?" Coles cut in to ask. "How do they whittle it down to the one or two points?"
Wolff said that it's exactly what is done. They simply give him two points. "And even that usually doesn't register with him. I mean, this is something I don't even know how people — how you can get people to appreciate this. How do you get people to appreciate that the presidency has — the workload of the presidency is extensive. And if you don't do it, if you adamantly don't do the work, can't do the work, what happens? What's the effect? That's really hard to make clear to voters and to the American people."
"So, I mean, first, it's incredible. So, he doesn't do the work. He can't do the work. The president of the United States does not know what he's talking about in these situations. How do you begin to explain that to people? And within the White House itself — and they have had the people within the White House have had to explain it to themselves, what do we do here? But that becomes for them, a kind of, well, it's Donald Trump. You know? He's been elected twice. He must know what he's doing."
He thinks a considerable part of the country focuses on that idea. He anticipates that the U.S. will ultimately see the impact of that. In some ways it already has.
The meeting resulted in a two-month extension of the trade deal they currently have. They also agreed to lower tariffs on about $30 billion worth of goods. China agreed to put new export controls on two fentanyl precursor chemicals, the White House claimed. They also said that China made commitments related to American agricultural products, Boeing aircraft and access to U.S. beef facilities. There was no movement on Taiwan, AI or Iran.