Bulwark Takes - Trump Just Discovered Liberia Speaks English (w/ Holly Berkley Fletcher)

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

Former CIA Africa analyst Holly Berkley Fletcher joins Ben Parker to discuss Trump’s latest detour into foreign policy confusion. What started as a trade pitch turned into a cringe history lesson and a whole lot of awkward.

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Hi everybody, I'm Ben Parker from The Bulwark, joined by our friend and former CIA Africa analyst Holly Berkeley-Futcher, who is joining us from where are you again, Holly? I am in Naivasha, Kenya, beautiful Naivasha, Kenya. It's in the Rift Valley, it's about two hours outside Nairobi, one hour to two hours depending on traffic. It's a beautiful lake. It's beautiful. It sounds great. And you are joining us because yesterday, Donald

Trump, president of the United States had a meeting with the president of Liberia. And this happened. Well, thank you. Such good English. So beautiful. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully? Where were you educated? Where? In Liberia. Yes, that's very interesting. It's beautiful English. I have people at this table can't speak nearly as well. It's so it's such a proud moment for an American raised in Africa. It's just it's very proud. Yeah, isn't it? Isn't it great? Okay. So, first of all, Holly, what is the official language of Liberia? English. Oh, not even English, but really,

I think pretty American English because the history of Liberia is that it was founded as a colony of sorts of the United States in the 19th century. Freed slaves founded Liberia in the 1820s and dominated its political life life until 1980 when the last Amerigo-Liberian president was violently overthrown. So they really controlled the country and the economy for all of those years. So yes, English. Yeah, for a while, over a century. Hence the name Liberia as in Liberty land, right? Yes, and Monrovia Liberty land, right? Yeah. Yeah. Is who? Ben? Would that be James? It is because it's the Monroe Doctrine was about the Western hemisphere and Liberia is not in that hemisphere. So it's a bit ironic. Yeah, so seems ironic to name the capital of a country settled by freed slaves after

a slave holder, but whatever. I'm sure it's fine. Well, but you know, Ben, sorry to get nerdy on you, but a lot of slaveholders supported the colonization of Africa by freed slaves because slaveholders did not want freed blacks in the United States. There was a lot of racism that was involved in the colonization movement in the 19th century. So it's actually not so ironic on that front. I was thinking of the Monroe Doctrine. That's a great point. You also, before we started recording, had a great point about,

um, it's been a bit of a pattern with Trump. This isn't the only meeting he's had recently with an African leader. So why don't you tell the people about that and how this fits into the broader pattern? Well, first of all, this meeting was not just with the president of Liberia. He met with, it was five presidents actually, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, and Gabon. And it's a little bit of a head scratcher why these five his Africa policy if you can even call it that is not very robust first of all but also a little bit of a it's hard to sort of determine these five countries are by no means like the powerhouses of Africa. So from what folks can tell, this meeting was

probably driven by his policy seems to be not just in Africa, but in elsewhere as well. Ukraine being one example, he was really obsessed with these rare earth minerals and getting minerals. And these countries, some of them have some of these, is it raw earth or rare earth? I can't even remember. Like manganese and things like that. And other sort of like Liberia actually, you know, rubber has a big rubber industry timber. Some of the other countries are related to migration issues, which of course,'s also obsessed with. Mauritania, there's a big outflow of migrants out of Mauritania. So that's kind of what people can decipher

in terms of why he's pursuing this. So his policy goal, again, if you didn't even call it a policy, seems to be to enhance trade to make up for all the lost aid and it even rhymes, which is very cool. You want, you know, trade instead of aid. So, but he's really wanting, but it doesn't make any sense. I see your confusion. It doesn't make any sense because at the same time he's putting tariffs on these countries and he's yet to renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which has been a huge boon to many African economies and has opened up

trade to the US markets for them. And that's still in limbo. Nobody knows what he's going to do. So it's not really trade per se. It's basically just trying to get these minerals. To me, the whole thing sounds very throwback to like 19th century. You've got your tariffs, and then you're going to go take some minerals from some countries. From Africa?

Yeah. Yeah. It sounds very like retro. Well, that's great. It's so nice that we have such people, such careful people thinking deeply about how we're going to interact with the world and not just stereotyping them based on, you know, how they look or sound. You know, I've traveled really widely on the continent. And first of all, I've rarely been in a place or in a situation where I can't find someone that doesn't speak English. The exception might be rural Tanzania,

which I was there to learn Swahili. So I was kind of glad not to find some, as many people who spoke English. But frankly, most Africans and not even terribly well educated not depending on the country, most Kenyans, I should say, which is the end South Africans, the some of the countries I know the best. They speak excellent English and I would say better than Donald Trump, which is a low bar. But nonetheless. Yeah, not surprising that they speak better English than he does better English than a lot of his cabinet secretaries. But you know, it's because basically he doesn't know anything about the world and doesn't

want to learn anything about the world because he doesn't care. Let me just read you my favorite quote from the meeting today. Can I do that? Oh, please. Oh, please. He said at one point they were talking about they were congratulating him on his negotiation of the DRC Rwanda peace deal. Okay.

Which again, we can do another whole segment on that another time. And he said, I quote, there's a lot of anger on your continent. We've been able to solve a lot of it. I, you know, I, I, I didn't realize he had solved so much of the anger on the continent. I don't know that it's necessarily anger. But that's the problem. He says he's going to work on Sudan next, which I'm super excited to see was going to do. Listen, I got to admit, I'm proud of him.

Because when we did one of these videos, when he met with Cyril Ramaphosa, he didn't know that Africa was a continent. He thought it was a country. So now he's showing off that he knows the difference now. But look, this is a... Oh, you know, that's a really good point. That's a very good point. This is what we've got now. So that's he's growing.

You know, he's nearly 80 and he's finally learning the difference between a country and a continent. Isn't it great? Growth mindset. Oh, one last little fun detail for you. So the president of Liberia, Joseph Boakai, was elected at the age of 79, making him Liberia's oldest president, similar to our friend, our current president, Donald Trump. And guess what his nickname is in Liberia, Ben, you're not going to guess.

Is it Old Joe? No, it's Sleepy Joe. Okay, that is perfect. That is the perfect place to end. Holly, thank you so much for joining me to make fun of all the stupidity. It's the only way we can get through it. Hey, Holly has a sub stack.

It is zero without stripes. Make sure to go check that out. Subscribe, it's wonderful. Also subscribe to the Bulwark. Subscribe to our YouTube. Like the video, leave a comment. And if you really like what we're doing and you want more of it, come to thebulwark.com.

Become a Bulwark Plus member, join our community. Holly's there. It's a great fun time. Holly, thanks so much for joining me. When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, Allbirds, Skims, sure, you think about a great product, a cool brand, and brilliant marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business, making selling, and for the shoppers buying, simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify.

Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not-so-secret secret, with ShopPay, that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, your commerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling on the web, in your store, in their feed,

and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more, sell on Shopify. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Skims uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash Audioboom. All lowercase. Go to Shopify.com slash Audioboom

to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com slash Audioboom.