At your service
Is the US embassy ready for Trump’s ‘working visit’?
‘No comment.” It’s pushing 30 degrees and Jennifer Williams is approaching one of the toughest weeks in one of the toughest jobs in international diplomacy, but the US ambassador’s press officer isn’t about to lose her cool – even when I ask how she plans to deal with a giant “Trump Baby” inflatable in the skies of London on day one of President Trump’s first official UK visit.
The six-metre tall blimp (complete with nappy and smartphone) was officially greenlit by Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, on Thursday, marking a victory for the protesters who raised over £22,000 to blow what’s effectively the loudest and moistest raspberry possible in POTUS’S face.
“Obviously, we’re working very hard to ensure that every part of the president’s visit goes smoothly,” says Williams – a slender rodeo-riding Texan with hair blown to salon perfection and the photogenic features of a Fox News anchor.
The 35-year-old diplomat – who previously managed the US government’s humanitarian assistance programme for Syrian refugees – has emerged as one of the most impressive characters in Channel 4’s compelling documentary, Inside The American Embassy. Steely and unflappable, she’s The West Wing’s CJ Cregg to Ambassador Robert Wood “Woody” Johnson, slickly and efficiently counteracting any negative “Trump Woman” stereotypes.
“Look, we expect there will be some protests,” shrugs Williams. “It’s every UK citizen’s right to protest and express those points of view, and we celebrate that right here, just as we do in the US. But, yes, we hope the visit will be a positive one and an opportunity to really highlight the strength of the relationship. And we’re not so much concerned about it, as excited,” she maintains, without so much as the flicker of a smile.
The embassy’s excitement is likely to be of a different brand to that experienced by the 50,000 protesters due to descend on the capital on Friday (the 13th…) for what organisers have described as “a carnival of resistance”.
But viewers of the fly-on-the-wall documentary will know that, thanks to a baptism of fire, Ambassador Robert “Woody” Johnson and his team have become adept at dealing with every brand of excitement since they took up their UK positions – from the whirlwind of damage limitation after being thrown into diplomatic meltdown by one of the president’s ill-conceived pre-breakfast tweets (advising Theresa May not to “focus on” the incendiary anti-muslim videos he re-tweeted but “the Radical Islamic terrorism” in the UK), to the fallout following his “bad deal” comments about the new embassy.
It’s in their new £800million Battersea base that Williams chooses to meet. And although the state-of-theart, moated glass cube is even more awe-inspiring than it looks on the show, when I ask whether President Trump will be visiting it, she tells me she “can’t comment on the president’s schedule” – which is surely as unequivocal a diplomatic “no” as they come.
Trump hadn’t yet been elected when Williams and the US State Department agreed to let the cameras follow their every move for a year, and they couldn’t possibly have predicted then how much of a strain their outspoken and divisive new president would put on the special relationship – or how rocky that first year would be?
“Well, as my boss Courtney [Austrian, counselor for public affairs] says in the first episode, tweets are a new form of communication in the realm of international diplomacy. And just as they are having an impact on domestic politics back in the States” – Williams goes on in a masterful illustration of that diplomacy – “they are also something we have adapted to.”
Yes, but doesn’t Williams get woken up in the middle of the night by the latest madcap presidential pronouncement? “No,” she flings back. “Just as in the States, there was a real desire from the media to try to seek an instant response to things, I do think that over time people are getting used to that style of communication. And that’s something that’s becoming a part of our day-to-day life.”
That may be so, but whereas Europe’s attitudes to Trump have softened, the UK public’s only seem to have deteriorated, with Ambassador Johnson – a long-time friend of the president’s – repeatedly forced to bolster his boss’s vision. “Look at Donald Trump and maybe take some inspiration [regarding Brexit],” the Johnson & Johnson heir and owner of the New York Jets American football team urges in the first episode. “I have two little boys and we’re raising them just like Donald Trump – without the hair.”
As someone who can inject humour into his straight-talk and who, like Trump, treats the political sphere as he does the corporate world, the ambassador is the perfect man to represent the president in the UK. Indeed, some of his best quotes could come from the president himself: “If you’re not getting blowback, you’re not being aggressive enough” is as Trumpist (and deeply un-british) a sentiment as they come.
“Well, [Johnson] is willing to speak his mind and push the boundaries a little bit, and I think that’s quite refreshing,” maintains Williams – who decides not to elaborate on a further point the ambassador makes in the second episode, which shows how the president’s controversial travel ban is actually being implemented here in the UK. “The world is being re-engineered in a way that makes sense,” asserts Johnson. “And I think that kind of speaks for itself in terms of his view – and the ambassador is carrying out the president’s vision here in the UK,” is all she can manage with a brisk nod.
Tell Williams how surprised some viewers have been by the number of strong, intelligent females in the show and she’ll take the compliment (“I appreciate that”). But when I ask her directly whether she believes the president – who has, after all, been described as responsible for unleashing “a wave of misogyny around the world” – is himself a fan of strong, intelligent females, Williams tells me she “can’t really comment on that in the context of the documentary”.
“What I can say is that in my experience … I have seen incredible examples of strong, talented, smart and dedicated women across the board.”
Although it’s true that the highvisibility women who speak for Trump help insulate him from the charges of sexism he has been plagued with, the likes of senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders have often proved more resilient and impressive than some of the president’s male appointees – bearing the humiliation incurred by their positions stoically. Even Hope Hicks – who was the third communications director to resign from Trump’s White House in just over a year – may reportedly be coming back as chief of staff.
Williams won’t confirm rumours that the president’s visit could form another episode of Inside the American Embassy, but I hope it does, and I actually agree when she insists that it has been most advantageous in “helping people understand our process and lift the veil on things that have been misunderstood”.
Whether the president will be able to convince the British public that he, too, has been misunderstood remains to be seen. Would that be the best thing to come out of the visit? A better understanding of Trump?
“Sure, and I think that’ll speak for itself, but having the president and the PM standing side by side and projecting the message of how important and close that relationship remains, regardless of what may happen on a day-to-day basis, that would be a win,” she says.
Not once has she used the words “the special relationship”, and I can’t help but wonder whether diplomats have been urged to ditch the phrase first used by Winston Churchill in 1946. “As a phrase, the ‘special relationship’ can often be overused,” she muses. And politicised? Certainly it has acquired contemptuous overtones since the Iraq war. “I don’t know about the political side. But I think it has become a bit trite through overuse – and we really don’t want it to lose its value.”
‘As a phrase, the “special relationship” can often be overused’