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A New Yorker with a taste for superlatives and, like his boss, for flashing thumbs-ups to the cameras, US ambassador to Belgium Bill White lives and breathes Donald Trump’s MAGA-style brand of diplomacy.<\/p>\n
The 59-year-old envoy — who boasts a relationship with Trump reaching back three decades — sums up his mission in simple terms: “To get an A plus” from the president.<\/p>\n
“President Trump, when I was talking to him about how much I loved him, I said, ‘I really want to make you happy,'” he told AFP in an interview in the Belgian capital.<\/p>\n
“He laughed, and he said, ‘Bring back $50 billion in deals,'” quipped White — a longtime entrepreneur with an easygoing banter who raised large sums for Trump in recent campaigns.<\/p>\n
The US president may be loathed, mocked or feared by many in Europe — White says the job of representing him is “pretty easy”.<\/p>\n
– ‘Truth Social’ on tap –<\/p>\n
“I get my news source from him, not from — no offense — but not from you or anyone else,” White told AFP reporters at his official residence in Brussels.<\/p>\n
“I read his Truth Social. I know exactly what he’s thinking,” said White, who makes it his mission to relay Trump’s “message” to the diplomats, politicians and business leaders he rubs shoulders with each day.<\/p>\n
Like many of the ambassadors drawn from Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, White has little of the career diplomat about him.<\/p>\n
Before politics he built an encyclopaedic career: he started out in real estate, ran a museum, raised funds for Barack Obama, and campaigned on the side for a wealthy Atlanta suburb to secede from the city.<\/p>\n
He was also a longtime Democrat, a married gay man and champion of liberal causes with extremely good connections — Aretha Franklin sang at his wedding.<\/p>\n
But the night of Trump’s 2016 election win, White decided to throw in his lot with the Republican billionaire, reportedly ditching Hillary Clinton’s deflated campaign event and crossing town to Trump’s.<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to late 2025, and his arrival in Belgium as US ambassador.<\/p>\n
Barely had he unpacked than White was summoned to the foreign ministry for intervening in a case involving Jewish circumcisers in Antwerp — a probe he called “antisemitic.”<\/p>\n
He insists the row was not serious enough to dent his “amazing relationship” with Belgium — throwing in a mildly off-colour joke about circumcision to drive home the point.<\/p>\n