President Donald Trump was basking in the praise of a\u00a0group of African leaders\u00a0on Wednesday, many of them speaking a different language, when the Liberian president took to his microphone and spoke in English – his country’s official language.<\/p>\n
“Liberia is a longtime friend of the United States and we believe in your policy of making America great again,” President Joseph Boakai said at a White House meeting before advocating for U.S. investment in his country. “We just want to thank you so much for this opportunity.”<\/p>\n
Trump was impressed and inquired where Boakai got his language skills.<\/p>\n
“Such good English,” Trump said. “Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?”<\/p>\n
Boakai seemed to chuckle.<\/p>\n
“In Liberia?” Trump asked. “Yes sir,” Boakai said.<\/p>\n
“That’s very interesting,” Trump said. “I have people at this table who can’t speak nearly as well.”<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump was basking in the praise of a\u00a0group of African leaders\u00a0on Wednesday, many of them speaking a different language, when the Liberian president took to his microphone and spoke in English – his country’s official language. “Liberia is a longtime friend of the United States and we believe in your policy of making […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,33,27],"tags":[1643,1453,366],"class_list":["post-16897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-politics","category-west-africa","tag-donald-trump","tag-joseph-boakai","tag-liberia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}