U.S. President Donald Trump was meeting with a group of West African leaders on Wednesday when one took his turn to address the group.
“Liberia is a longtime friend of the United States and we believe in your policy of making America great again,” President Joseph Boakai said before advocating for American investment in his country.
“We just want to thank you so much for this opportunity,” he told Trump during the White House meeting.
The president, seemingly impressed by Boakai’s fluency in English, inquired about his language skills.
“Such good English … where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated?”
Boakai appeared to chuckle, albeit nervously. English is the official language of Liberia.
“In Liberia?” Trump asked. “Yes, sir,” Boakai replied.
“That’s very interesting, that’s beautiful English…. I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well,” Trump said.
Liberia was founded in 1822 as a colony for free Black Americans, the brainchild of white Americans trying to address what they saw as a problem: the future for Black people in the United States once slavery ended.
English is Liberia’s official language, though multiple Indigenous languages are spoken there as well.
U.S. President Donald Trump listens during a multilateral lunch with African leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House July 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C. The leaders of Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal met with Trump during the luncheon.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
Trump held the talks with the leaders of Liberia, Senegal, Gabon, Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau as part of his efforts to shift U.S. relations with those countries from aid to trade.
Trump said he sees “great economic potential in Africa” as those seated at the table boasted of their countries’ natural resources and heaped praise on the U.S. president, including their thanks for his help in settling a long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The U.S. president described the nations present at the meeting as “all very vibrant places with very valuable land, great minerals, and great oil deposits, and wonderful people.”
The five nations whose leaders were meeting Trump represent only a fraction of U.S.-Africa trade, but all are home to valuable, untapped natural resources.
President Donald Trump listens during a multilateral lunch with African leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House July 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
Each African leader gave a speech and, according to The Associated Press, adopted flattering and complimentary tones to commend Trump for what they described as his peace efforts across the world and tried to outshine one another by showing off the plethora of natural resources their nations have to offer.
“We have a great deal of resources,” Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, president of Mauritania, said, listing rare earths, as well as manganese, uranium and possibly lithium. “We have a lot of opportunities to offer in terms of investment.”
As the president spoke, his administration was informing developing countries about higher tariff rates effective Aug. 1. The five West African nations were not among them.
The portion of the lunch meeting that was open to the press didn’t touch much on the loss of aid, which critics say will result in millions of deaths.
The president’s latest faux pas with an African leader comes months after he presented South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with footage captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo that he claimed was proof of a white genocide in South Africa.
A fact-checking report by Reuters found that the images shown to the South African president were of humanitarian workers carrying body bags in the Congolese city of Goma.
— with files from Reuters and The Associated Press