South Korean President Lee Jae Myung pulled out all the stops to avoid a “Zelensky situation” during his meeting with Trump, including reading The Art of the Deal. “Everybody gave me the advice to have patience,” Lee told attendees at a forum in Washington after the event. “I had read President Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal. As a negotiating technique, he presents conditions that are hard for the opponent to accept. But at the final stage, he does not come to an unreasonable conclusion.” Before the summit, Lee embarked on a rare visit to Japan to seek the prime minister’s advice on how to deal with Trump, and spent time golfing just in case the president invited him onto the green. The result was a charm offensive in which Lee praised Trump’s gold refurbishment of the White House, ignored his falsehoods about Korea, and left in a good mood as both parties agreed to closer co-operation. “Lee did his best to ensure that his first in-person meeting with Trump wouldn’t devolve into a public spectacle that has happened with some world leaders,” Andrew Yao, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Bloomberg.
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