A helpful who’s who guide for Donald Trump, who may be about to receive the nuclear launch codes but isn’t great with names. Just ask Michael Gove, who explains in this week’s Spectator that Trump isn’t exactly sure of the difference between EU heavyweights Donald Tusk (pictured above left) and Jean-Claude Juncker (right) .
“The President-elect told me that he was delighted that he’d been congratulated on his election by the ‘very fine gentleman’ who was the ‘head of the European Union’” Gove writes. “ ‘Mr Juncker?’ I ventured. ‘Ah, yes,’ he replied.”
It was a good question from Gove: adjectives of that nature attached to Juncker are rare. But before Jean-Claude starts preening, it seems Trump may have misdirected his compliment-bomb. The European president who rang to congratulate the President-elect was not European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, but European Council president Donald Tusk. Our handy pictorial cheat-sheet may help.
But Gove doesn’t think it’s a problem. “Many of my colleagues will, I’m sure, regard Mr Trump’s error as proof of the folly of electing an unschooled barbarian to the White House,” writes Gove. “I think it says rather more about the problem of having five different, unelected presidents of the EU.”
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