President Donald Trump has come under fire this week for commending Liberian President Joseph Boakai for speaking “such good English” — remarks experts say were utterly “condescending” and spoke volumes.
During a Wednesday meeting at the White House, where Trump hosted five West African leaders, the U.S. president appeared visibly surprised at one point as he marveled at the way Boakai spoke. Trump smiled at the Liberian president while he inquired about where he learned to speak “so beautifully.”
“Where— were you educated? Where?” Trump asked Boakai.
“Yes sir,” Boakai responded.
“In Liberia?” Trump asked
“Yes sir,” Boakai said.
“Well, that’s very interesting,” Trump responded. “It’s beautiful English.”
While there are a number of indigenous languages, and varieties of English, spoken in Liberia, English is the official language of the West African nation — which has deep historical ties with the U.S. Liberia was founded after formerly enslaved Black Americans, and those who were born free, relocated to the area as part of an effort to relocate and resettle African Americans.
Trump was widely slammed and mocked online for his tone and his apparent shock that Boakai spoke English — and as Trump said, “so beautifully.” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) criticized the president on X, saying, “Trump never misses an opportunity to be racist and wrong, and every day he finds a new way to be embarrassing.”
“Asking the President of Liberia where he learned English when it’s literally the official language is peak ignorance,” she continued, “I’m pretty sure being blatantly offensive is not how you go about conducting diplomacy.”
LaGarrett King, professor of social studies education at the University at Buffalo, told HuffPost that one of the main words that came to him after watching the exchange between Trump and Boakai was “condescending.”
King, who is also the director of the university’s Center for K–12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education, said Trump’s remarks to Boakai were “on the same plane” as a common condescending phrase often leveled at Black people: “You’re so articulate.”
King said that oftentimes when someone says “you’re so articulate” to a Black person, they are not recognizing that person’s “humanity.”
He also emphasized the gravity of Trump’s remarks in the presence of a fellow world leader.
“It sounded very condescending to a fellow peer,” he said. “They’re peers. They’re leaders of countries.”

In general, pointing out that a Black person “speaks well” or is “articulate” often has negative implications.
Quito J. Swan, professor of History and Africana Studies at The George Washington University, said that when watching the exchange between Trump and Boakai, he thought about the “unfortunately familiar” rhetoric in public discourse surrounding Africa and Black people “being articulate.”
“The implication is that Black people aren’t usually articulate or smart,” he told HuffPost, before adding that that exchange was “standard Trump.”
Swan said that it was “par for the course” for Trump to speak that way to Boakai, considering Trump’s rhetoric about other African nations and that he infamously described Haiti and other African nations as “shithole” countries.
Shaun Harper, a professor of education, business, and public policy at the University of Southern California, told HuffPost that Trump’s remarks to Boakai were an “embarrassing example of an annoyingly common racial microaggression gone global.”
“Trump did to Boakai what many white colleagues do to Black Americans in workplaces,” he said. “The U.S. equivalent of this usually occurs in the form of telling Black professionals that we are ‘so articulate,’ with an insultingly surprising tone that strongly suggests that people like us usually aren’t articulate speakers.”
Trump’s inquiry about Boakai’s educational background spoke volumes.
King said that one can infer from Trump’s questions about Boakai’s educational background that the U.S. president didn’t “account for these countries having very solid academic institutions.”
He said that Trump appeared “surprised” that Boakai mentioned he was educated in Liberia, perhaps revealing that Trump had assumed Boakai attended schools in a Western nation.
Swan said that Trump showed a “lack of knowledge” about Liberia and its history, as well as a lack of knowledge about Black people in the U.S.
Liberia is “huge” for African Americans, he said, adding: “From the 19th century return movements, this quest, this longing to return to Africa — both physically and conceptually... it’s huge for return movements in general.”
Swan said that Trump’s questions about Boakai’s educational background were “troubling” because they were an attack on the continent’s rich history in education.
“When we think about Africa, we should also think about Africa as a very storied site of intellectualism,” he said, adding, “We should think about education when we think of Africa.”
Swan said that Trump showed he was seemingly unaware that English is the official language in Liberia, and that his remarks implied that someone would’ve had to leave Africa “to go somewhere to learn how to speak ‘proper English’ — which is a loaded trope in and of itself,” he said.
Kula Fofana, a spokesperson for Boakai’s office, told the Associated Press after Wednesday’s meeting that it’s a “good thing that President Trump is commending our President for his way of speaking.”
But many viewers didn’t feel Trump’s remarks were such a “good thing.” Many people online felt his comments were condescending and inexcusable. And Swan told HuffPost that he personally knows several Liberians, and other people of African heritage, who were “very much offended.”
King said that he believes people watching the exchange are also, overall, frustrated that Trump “gets away with things that other presidents could not get away with.”
“And there is that, you know, kind of a flow of whiteness and power dynamics that are at play in this particular conversation,” he said. “So people kind of relate that to their own lives.”