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President Donald Trump shared two screenshots of a text exchange with the NATO secretary general and the French president.
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The posts show that even top-level diplomacy can become social media fodder.
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End-to-end apps can encrypt messages, but experts say the technology can’t protect against betrayal.
President Donald Trump has spent years using social media to bypass diplomatic norms.
Now he’s going one step further: posting screenshots of seemingly private messages from world leaders for millions to see.
In two posts on Truth Social on Tuesday, Trump published private messages from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and French President Emmanuel Macron.
One message attributed to Rutte praised Trump’s actions in Syria.
“What you have done in Syria today is incredible,” the message said. It also said Rutte planned to use media engagements at the World Economic Forum in Davos to highlight Trump’s work in Syria, Gaza and Ukraine, before returning to Greenland: “I am committed to finding a way forward in Greenland. Can’t wait to meet you.”
In recent weeks, Trump has stepped up his push for the US to acquire Greenland.
A NATO official confirmed the authenticity of the exchange to Business Insider.
Another screenshot shows Macron’s message to Trump. In it, the French president says the two leaders are “totally aligned on Syria,” adding that “we can do a great job in Iran.”
However, he questioned Trump’s actions in Greenland, saying, “I don’t understand what you’re doing in Greenland.”
The French president’s inner circle confirmed the message’s authenticity to Business Insider.
Private diplomacy, now public
Trump’s decision to publish the texts underscores how private exchanges between close associates — once considered off-limits — can now become social media content, blurring the line between diplomacy and public display, former political advisers and academics told Business Insider.
John McTernan, who served as British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s director of political operations from 2005 to 2007, said Trump’s decision to publish private messages fits into a broader pattern of subversive communications designed to project power and unpredictability.
Trump, he said, has mastered social media as a political tool and used it to bypass diplomatic protocol, signaling that he doesn’t see diplomacy as a negotiation as much as an assertion of will.
“This is a man with no sense of protocol, which I think is part of the appeal of his supporters,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
The cost of trust
Janice Stein, the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and founding director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, said publicly sharing private messages comes at a huge cost to trust.
While such posts may provide short-term gains with audiences, she said they encourage leaders to self-censor and undermine trust among peers.
Richard Stengel, who served as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs under Democratic President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2016, took a stronger view.
He said that diplomacy depends on privacy and secrecy to allow leaders to test ideas and speak clearly, and exposing private exchanges to the public risks turning diplomacy into impulsive, demonstrative behavior with little follow-through.
“For Trump to violate that presumption of trust and confidentiality is like detonating a bomb on the negotiating table,” he said.
Encryption cannot guarantee sanity
Some messaging apps can encrypt messages end-to-end, so only the sender and recipient can read them. It protects messages from third parties such as hackers, but it does not prevent the sender or recipient from sharing, screenshotting or publishing.
Associate Professor Rebecca Slayton of Cornell University’s Department of Science and Technology Studies said: “The publication of these messages is a reminder of the limits of technology to secure communications.”
These chats offer “very secure communications if the sender and receiver choose to keep their communication private,” she said, “but the human element is always the weakest link in security.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
