When Donald Trump spoke at the Gaza ceasefire ceremony in Cairo in October 2025, he transformed what would ordinarily have been a solemn diplomatic event into something more akin to a comedy ‘roast’. Some of the most powerful people in the world watched as Trump performed a comedy act that involved their almost ritual humiliation. Not only did Trump make jokes at the expense of a variety of Prime Ministers and Presidents, but he accepted, if not demanded, their praise. And praise him they did, calling for Trump to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and describing him as a figure of world historical importance. There were other populist leaders present, including Viktor Orban and Giorgia Meloni, but none sought to match Trump’s vulgarity or challenge his jokes and insults.
Trump did what, perhaps, no other contemporary leader could do and retain their position. He asked the Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, whether he would now “live very nicely” with India, and when Sharif gave a halting reply, joked that he was disappointed by the response. He mentioned the absence of Norway’s Prime Minister, asking, “What happened, Norway?” He called Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni “a beautiful young woman,” acknowledging that such a comment could end a political career in the United States, before declaring, “I’ll take my chances.” The audience laughed, as well they might have, because none of them had the courage to tell Trump to his face that his behaviour was inappropriate. Rather than stick to his prepared remarks, Trump drifted freely between stories and asides. He joked about the cost of Egyptian fighter jets, praised their beauty, and reminisced about Air Force One flying over the desert sands. His stories deflated the ceremony’s gravity and replaced it with his own comic authority, with Trump as a sort of Don Rickles style insult comedian licensed to dish out the insults at will.
What is particularly interesting about this for those of us interested in Populism, is that Trump both performed as the ultimate authority and power in the world, but also as an anti-elite populist, who with common and crude speech challenged the effete, diplomatic, and ultimately dull world of the global elite. How, then, does Trump retain his status as a populist man of the people while also acting as the most powerful ‘elite’ politician in the world, essentially bullying the great and the good while demanding they pay him tribute? Perhaps the best way to understand this is to turn to Benjamin Moffitt’s work on Populism as a political style. Moffitt describes Populism as a performance that thrives on crisis, authenticity, and emotion. Populist leaders distinguish themselves through a deliberate breach of decorum. They act as though their rejection of elite manners proves they are genuine, that their lack of polish makes them more real. In Cairo, Trump embodied this principle with perfect precision.
Moffitt calls this quality “bad manners,” and it appears to come as naturally as breathing to Trump. While others thanked one another in formal tones, Trump improvised, boasted, and mocked. Even his praise seemed more mocking than genuine. The most powerful figures in the world became his audience, reacting to his rhythm, his pauses, and his jokes. They forced out laugher when required, and did what they could not the cringe when Trump insulted them to their faces. One should, of course, not feel sorry for these supposed global leaders. Their self-abasement before Trump only reveals their own weakness and inability and unwillingness to stand for their own supposed principles. Humourless, boring, and ineffectual, Trump’s audience of leaders almost invited their own humiliation at his hands.
Populist figures seem to occupy two realities at once. They are insiders when exercising power and outsiders when voicing grievance, shifting between the two as political attention demands. This ability to live within contradiction is central to modern populism. It allows elites to appear morally close to “the people” even as they retain the advantages of their position. For example, Trump is both the most privileged of elites and a man who presents himself as outside the elite order. His vulgar humour allows him to hold both positions at once. He can be the billionaire president of the world’s only superpower and the common man who refuses to act elite.
Trump’s Cairo performance demonstrates this dynamic. For example, when Shabaz Sharif rose to call Trump “the most genuine and wonderful candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize”, “the man this world needed most”, and called him a man history would remember “in golden words” Trump grinned and replied, “Wow, I didn’t expect that. Let’s go home. There’s nothing more I have to say.” Or when he sought to praise fellow right-wing populist Viktor Orbán, saying first, “Oh, Victor. Where is Victor? We love Victor,” pronouncing the latter’s name in an exaggerated manner and instructing the audience on the preferred Hungarian pronunciation. Trump jokingly took credit for Orbán’s re-election, boasting that this occurred due to his endorsement of the Hungarian Prime Minister. He then said that a lot of people don’t like Orbán, but that didn’t matter, because only Trump’s own opinion carried any weight in the world. Trump acted as if he had drawn these people together only to insult them to their faces, at one point saying that among the leaders present there were “a few of them [he did not] like at all. But you’ll never find out who they are”. Then he added, “Maybe you will, come to think of it”.
After telling the leaders of India and Pakistan that they would “live very nicely together,” Trump told Iraq’s Prime Minister that his country had so much oil they didn’t know what to do with it all. These digressions had no structure, yet every tangent and aside reiterated Trump’s centrality and his power over the other leaders. However, Trump’s jokes were not random. They were demonstrations of power disguised as familiarity. Calling Meloni “beautiful” signalled that he could transgress where others could or would not, and demonstrated that he was not beholden to the political correctness insisted upon by ‘elites’. On the contrary, Trump’s vulgarity was proof that despite his wealth and power, he kept touch with the street and the ordinary person.
To many educated people, Trump’s speech was hardly amusing. No doubt, many people found it offensive, cruel, even disturbing. But to understand why Trump is such an effective populist we must comprehend how his transgressive performances link power to emotion, and in doing this demonstrate his rejection of the kind of boring managerial politics rejected by a large portion of the American people. Where most world leaders keep to the script, Trump’s spontaneity becomes evidence of sincerity. His dominance shows him to be winning the war against the global elite. Indeed, Trump’s gift lies in his ability to sustain the role of world’s most powerful man and anti-elite populist at once. Many populists move between being outsiders and insiders depending on circumstance. Trump manages to be both simultaneously. He can receive Egypt’s highest honour, the Order of the Nile, while behaving like he’s Don Rickles at a comedy roast on 1970s television.
For students of populism, the Cairo event is a textbook case of Moffitt’s claim that populism is performed through crisis and emotion. Yet beyond the event itself, and almost forgotten, Gaza lay in ruins. Inside the room, Trump was making everyone laugh. Perhaps you, reader, laughed at home. Laughter wasn’t entirely wrong. What else could one do in the face of absurdity, as the world’s supposed leaders prostrated and humiliated themselves before a man many of them secretly despised? Trump was funny, and they were weak. But the laughter was hollow, because beneath it lay the bodies, almost unnoticed, of the dead.
Further Reading on E-International Relations
- Right-wing Populism and the Attack on Cooperative International Security
- Opinion – Populism as an Existential Threat in Israel
- Can Populism Survive COVID-19?
- The Populist Potential of the US and its Fragile Grip on the International System
- Democracy in Virulent Times: Symbols and the Future of National Populism
- Nationalism, Populism, and Institutional Decline: The Parallel Paths of Trump and Netanyahu
