Donald Trump’s second White House term has seen him berate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, attempt to pause all foreign aid, and put forward a plan to “own” Gaza – and he hasn’t even been in office for 50 days.
On the latest episode of Sky News podcast The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim, Matt Pottinger – Mr Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term – joins the hosts to unpack the leader’s motivations.
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The world view that the US president subscribes to can be distilled down into five principles, according to Mr Pottinger: the five Rs.
Here, he breaks down the “things that matter” to Mr Trump.
Reciprocity
This idea is simple. “If a country, in terms of both its national security interest and its approach to trade with the United States, treats the US the way the US treats that country, things are going to work out okay,” Mr Pottinger explained.
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He continued: “President Trump carries around this sense of aggrievement that he feels that the United States has unfairly opened its markets or has heavily subsidised other countries’ security without those countries carrying enough of the burden.”
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Reindustrialisation
This is a term Mr Trump used during his first stint in office, but “you hear it even more now”, Mr Pottinger said.
He explained: “It’s this idea that the United States haemorrhaged too much of its industrial base to other countries, particularly America’s number one adversary, the People’s Republic of China under the Chinese Communist Party.
“He wants to draw foreign direct investment back directly.
“It’s not good enough just to go to friendly nations, so-called friend-shoring. He wants on-shoring of this industrial investment.”
Reimbursement
Mr Pottinger said he first learnt this word when Mr Trump wanted to use it in a speech in Seoul back in 2017 – but advisers including himself managed to talk the US president out of it.
“We’d written a very nice speech for him […] and he wrote in a line in the middle of it saying that South Korea needs to reimburse the United States for everything that US has spent going back to 1950 to defend Korea,” he said. “We persuaded him not to use that line in that speech at that particular moment.
“It would have been the only thing that would have been reported about the speech and it would not have been taken well by the host. It would have been rude.
“But it’s still his belief that every country that the United States defends or has provided for defence for, needs […] to be reimbursed [the US] in some way.”
Real estate
Reimbursement, Mr Pottinger explained, leads perfectly into the fourth R: real estate.
Mr Trump got his start in the business world at his father’s real estate company in the late 1960s and went on to develop properties including the Trump Tower in New York and numerous Trump hotels worldwide.
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In November last year, Forbes estimated that his real estate investments account for $1.1bn of the president’s $5.6bn net worth.
Mr Trump’s real estate interests have been reflected in some of his political proposals, including his redevelopment plan for Gaza.
“I would own this,” he said of the Gaza Strip last month – before sharing an AI video of the territory changed into a Middle Eastern paradise with skyscrapers, yachts and a ‘Trump Gaza’ building.
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Respect
Mr Trump “wants to be treated respectfully,” Mr Pottinger said. “And he’s actually quite gracious as a host, when he feels that he’s being treated with respect, he’ll treat his counterpart with respect.
“I’ve been in the room in scores of meetings with foreign leaders, and that’s usually how it’s worked out.”
