Donald Trump likes gold, and this is hardly breaking news. Anyone who has followed Trump for decades knows the aesthetic: gold lettering, gold interiors, gold fixtures, enormous rooms, chandeliers, marble, trophies and almost everything else associated with conspicuous wealth. Where Scandinavian minimalism whispers, Trumpian decoration enters the room with a brass band. So perhaps South Korean President Lee Jae Myung knew his audience when Donald Trump arrived in Gyeongju in October 2025.
Trump was presented with a replica of a magnificent gold crown from the ancient Silla Kingdom, along with South Korea's highest decoration, the Grand Order of Mugunghwa. The original crown dates from roughly the fifth or sixth century, when Silla was developing into the power that would eventually dominate much of the Korean peninsula. South Korea explained the gift in terms of history, unity and hopes for a new golden age in Korean-American relations. It was an entirely legitimate diplomatic gift with genuine Korean cultural significance, and there is no reason to pretend otherwise. But come on: they gave Donald Trump a giant gold crown.
Sometimes diplomacy becomes so perfectly symbolic that satire becomes almost redundant. The image was irresistible because Trump has spent years being accused by opponents of behaving more like a monarch than a republican president. He likes ceremonial grandeur, magnificent buildings, military displays and having his name attached to things. Then, as if the scene had been commissioned by a political cartoonist, an allied government produced an enormous glittering crown, and Trump appeared delighted.
This raises a more interesting question than whether the crown itself was appropriate. Have foreign governments learned that Donald Trump is unusually susceptible to the ancient political technology known as flattery? The evidence is at least suggestive, because Trump's 2025 Asian tour was remarkable for its elaborate personal attention. Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi presented him with a putter once owned by his late friend Shinzo Abe and other golf-related gifts, while South Korea produced the crown and its highest honour. Foreign governments have plainly learned the usefulness of golf, grand receptions, ceremonial honours and extravagant personal gestures when dealing with the American president.
This is not necessarily foolish on their part. Quite the opposite: diplomacy has always involved understanding the personality of the person sitting on the other side of the table. If Winston Churchill responds to history, give him history. If another leader cares deeply about protocol, observe the protocol. If a president loves golf, arrange some golf. And if the world's most powerful man likes shiny things, perhaps you show him something shiny.
There is something wonderfully primate about all this. Human beings are, after all, primates, however magnificent our constitutions and nuclear submarines may make us feel. Our evolutionary history did not disappear when somebody invented the three-piece suit. We remain intensely sensitive to status, display, dominance, prestige and possession, and we like objects that signal importance. Crowns, medals, jewels, sceptres, thrones and ceremonial robes appear throughout human history for a reason.
Gold is particularly potent because it is rare, durable, difficult to obtain and visually distinctive. Civilisations separated by enormous distances have repeatedly associated it with gods, kings, wealth and power. Humans have spent thousands of years digging enormous holes in the ground to extract a metal, refining it at great expense and then putting it on their heads to demonstrate that they outrank the people who did the digging. The Silla kings were doing status signalling fifteen centuries before anyone invented Truth Social.
Trump merely dispenses with some of the subtlety. His critics sometimes treat his attraction to ostentation as though it were uniquely pathological, when it is actually an exaggerated form of something very human. Plenty of billionaires buy enormous yachts. Aristocrats accumulated palaces. Pharaohs constructed pyramids. Medieval kings covered themselves in jewels. Modern politicians collect titles, honorary degrees, photographs with celebrities and invitations to exclusive gatherings. Trump's peculiarity is not that he likes status symbols but that he seems remarkably unembarrassed about liking them.
Most modern Western elites have learned to disguise status competition. The billionaire wears an apparently ordinary black T-shirt that costs hundreds of dollars. The academic competes for prestige through citation counts, prizes and fellowships rather than gold chains. The politician demonstrates importance through access, motorcades and seating arrangements while insisting that everyone is equal. Trump puts his name on a skyscraper in enormous gold letters. In evolutionary terms, subtle he is not.
One could almost imagine an ethologist narrating the South Korean ceremony. The dominant American male enters the ceremonial territory of the allied group. The host approaches bearing a highly reflective status object. The visitor examines the object with visible approval. Mutual affiliative behaviour follows and resources are subsequently negotiated. David Attenborough could make something of it.
Yet behind the comedy lies a serious problem, because Trump is not merely a wealthy private citizen collecting ornaments. He is President of the United States, and foreign governments have enormous economic and strategic interests riding on his decisions. South Korea certainly did. At the time of Trump's visit, Washington and Seoul were negotiating over tariffs, hundreds of billions of dollars in Korean investment, defence arrangements, shipbuilding and nuclear technology.
It would be absurd to say that South Korea obtained favourable treatment because somebody handed Trump a crown. International negotiations involving hundreds of billions of dollars do not work like transactions at a medieval pawn shop, and subsequent disagreements between Washington and Seoul demonstrate that ceremonial flattery did not purchase permanent American compliance. The interesting question is subtler: did the South Koreans believe flattering Trump would help create a favourable atmosphere for negotiation?
Almost certainly they believed that making the president feel respected and celebrated would help, because otherwise diplomatic staffs would not devote so much attention to the personal tastes of foreign leaders. They would hardly be alone in reaching this conclusion about Trump. Governments have increasingly learned that diplomacy with him is intensely personal. Relationships matter to him, respect matters, public praise matters, perceived insults matter and personal gestures matter. He frequently describes foreign leaders in strongly personal terms: they like him, he likes them, they respect him, they treated him badly, or they are strong, smart or wonderful.
This can sometimes be an advantage. International politics is conducted by human beings rather than equations, and personal relationships can break deadlocks that bureaucracies cannot. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to talk directly to leaders whom conventional diplomacy would prefer to isolate. But personality-driven diplomacy has an obvious vulnerability, because if personal warmth can improve relations, personal flattery can potentially influence judgement.
That is where the crown stops being merely funny. A president should certainly accept diplomatic courtesies graciously, but the world's most powerful office requires a certain resistance to baubles. The interests of the United States cannot depend upon which foreign government produces the most impressive ceremonial reception, the most beautiful ballroom, the best golf club or the shiniest present.
There is an old political danger here. Kings were surrounded by flatterers precisely because access to the king produced advantages. Courtiers learned his preferences, laughed at his jokes, praised his wisdom and brought him objects he enjoyed. The monarch might genuinely believe that everyone around him recognised his extraordinary qualities, when in reality they recognised something much more useful: his susceptibility to praise. Republican government was supposed to diminish this sort of politics.
The American president is not a king. He temporarily occupies an office created by a Constitution deliberately designed by men deeply suspicious of monarchy. The presidency possesses enormous powers, but its occupant remains a citizen entrusted with those powers for a limited period. That makes the imagery of Trump admiring a gold crown both hilarious and faintly unsettling.
His supporters should be able to say so, because one does not have to join the endless anti-Trump hysteria to recognise Trump's faults. Indeed, political loyalty becomes intellectually worthless if it requires pretending that one's preferred leader possesses none. Trump can be right about borders, China, energy policy or the failures of the progressive establishment, while also being vain. Those propositions are perfectly compatible, and the more interesting conservative position is to recognise that vanity is one of the oldest political weaknesses known to mankind.
The Greeks knew it, the Romans knew it and Shakespeare certainly knew it. Christianity made pride the deadliest of the deadly sins for good reason. Powerful people are especially vulnerable because fewer and fewer people are willing to tell them anything they do not want to hear. A man who loves praise will attract professional praisers, while a man who loves magnificence will eventually meet diplomats carrying magnificent objects.
And a man who loves gold should probably expect someone, somewhere, to turn up with a crown. The South Koreans may simply have been honouring an American president with a beautiful symbol of their own history, and their explanation deserves to be taken seriously. The crown remains a replica of an important Korean cultural treasure rather than something manufactured in a Trump Tower gift shop. But successful diplomacy operates at several levels simultaneously, and a gift can honour Korean history, symbolise an alliance and flatter its recipient at exactly the same time.
The genius was choosing a gift that accomplished all three. Perhaps somewhere inside the enormous machinery of the South Korean state, a diplomat looked through the catalogue of national treasures, reached the Silla crown and thought: that's the one. Gold, huge, royal and glittering, he'll love it. And judging by the photographs, he did.