Butter, repeat

Flattery may be a sin, but in a Trumpian world it gets the job done. Although it doesn’t always work.

How did so much European butter get past White House’s gates untariffed on Monday? Between them, Merz, Macron, Starmer, Meloni and others beamed and flattered enough to fill a pantry while ensuring ‘daddy’ Trump didn’t throw Ukraine under Putin’s bus. Did they say ‘daddy’? No, but Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, who was with them, did when he buttered up Trump after the bunker-busting in Iran. After all, it’s no state secret that Trump loves being buttered up.

And he isn’t the first leader to skate on false praise. Emperors, dukes, presidents and prime ministers, cops and judges, and even Goldsmith’s village schoolmaster, have been susceptible to it: “Full well they laugh’d with counterfeited glee/At all his jokes, for many a joke had he…” But what sets Trump apart is his unlimited appetite for flattery. Like he told a gathering of African premiers, who had been buttering him up over lunch in July: “This is great. We could do this all day long.”

Generally, though, flattery is off-putting because it’s insincere and motivated. Psychologists say the vast majority of people feel uncomfortable when they’re flattered, and take a dim view of sycophants. The sliminess of Uriah Heep in David Copperfield is illustrative. So are most synonyms – lickspittle and bootlicker, for example.

Dante took such a dim view of flatterers that he put them in a hotter part of hell than murderers. There’s also some evidence that flattery directed upward – from smaller to bigger entity, for example Asim Munir to Trump – risks inviting contempt. It only works when the recipient is willing to be deceived. Like the Evil Queen in Snow White crying, “mirror, mirror on the wall…” Or the current Potus, who, instead of crying “whoa”, receives Bibi’s endorsement for a peace Nobel with a “wow”.

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