WATCH: President Jokowi offers Trump greetings from his ‘millions of fans in Indonesia’, invites him to visit

Indonesian President Joko Widodo and US President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg on Saturday. Screenshot: Youtube
Indonesian President Joko Widodo and US President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Hamburg on Saturday. Screenshot: Youtube

US President Donald Trump seems to have had a rather tough time at the G20 summit that took place over the weekend in Hamburg, Germany, with one particularly scathing review of his performance going massively viral online. It must have been a relief for him, then, to receive a bit of adulation from at least one world leader – Indonesian President Joko Widodo (who is not, in fact, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, as the person who runs Trump’s official Instagram page apparently thought before correcting the error).

Whether that adulation was truly sincere… well, we’ll let you watch the video and decide for yourself.

Before their closed-door bilateral meeting on Saturday, in which they seemed to have focused primarily on high-level trade talk, the two world leaders sat down for some pre-meeting PR-friendly remarks in which President Joko Widodo offered up “warm greetings from your millions of fans in Indonesia.”




Here’s the official White House transcript:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much. It’s my great honor to have the President of Indonesia, a country that is doing extremely well — and I would imagine a big part of that is leadership. Do you agree with that? (Laughter.)

We’ve become friends, and we’re going to be doing a lot of deals together — trade deals. We have our whole trade delegation here, and we will start doing a lot of trading with Indonesia. We do very little business, relatively, now. But we are going to do a lot of business.

So, Mr. President, it’s a great honor to have you.

PRESIDENT WIDODO: Thank you for this meeting, President Trump. First and most importantly, I need to deliver to you warm greetings from your millions of fans in Indonesia. (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you.

PRESIDENT WIDODO: They are only interested in one thing: When can they personally welcome you to Indonesia?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We’ll get there. We’ll get there. It’s a place I’d like to go.

PRESIDENT WIDODO: I can get into serious trouble if I don’t bring back some good news for your millions of fans in Indonesia. (Laughter.)

Second, I wanted to convey our sincere appreciation for Vice President Michael Pence visit to Jakarta —

PRESIDENT TRUMP: That’s right. He did.

PRESIDENT WIDODO: — three months ago. We really, really appreciate that your administration choose Indonesia as one of the four stops on your Vice President’s tour around Asia.

Vice President Pence underlined the commitment of the USA to strengthen the strategic partnership with Indonesia. From our perspective, his visit was very, very successful. So once again, thank you.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much.


The reason we question whether Jokowi’s repeated bit about Trump’s “millions of fans in Indonesia” might have been a brilliant bit of trolling is because: #1 Trump is not very popular in Indonesia, especially after his attempts to implement a de-facto Muslim travel ban #2 it feels, to us, like it might have been a sly reference to that infamous incident time during Trump’s presidential campaign in which he asked Indonesia’s former House Speaker, Setya Novanto, “Do they like me in Indonesia?”

And #3 just look at Jokowi’s face after the first time he says it.

Even the White House transcript notes the “laughter” both times after Jokowi says it. But based on what we know of him, we’re guessing that all The Donald heard was “your millions of fans”, which put a huge grin on his face.

We don’t know what exactly was said during their closed-door meeting, but according to the official White House summary, “The two leaders emphasized their commitment to strengthening the United States-Indonesia strategic partnership, which is grounded in the interests and values shared by two of the world’s largest democracies.” They also discussed trade, defense, terrorism and North Korea.

We’ll just have to wait and see if Trump was serious about taking up Jokowi’s invitation to visit Indonesia.



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