KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — President Trump danced with a troupe of native performers upon arrival in the Malaysian capital for the first leg of an Asian tour.
Looking fresh after a 23-hour flight from Washington, the 79-year-old swung his hips and pumped his fists to the beat of a drum near a red carpet on the airport tarmac outside Air Force One on Sunday morning local time.
An array of colorfully garbed dancers represented the country’s major ethnicities, including indigenous people from Borneo and groups of Malays, Chinese and Indians.
The president was accompanied by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who bobbed to the music alongside his guest.
Trump is blazing through Asia on a five-day mission to bolster America’s standing and trade deals in the region, including firming up relations with newly elected Japanese Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo and then meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea, where he may also greet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un along the Demilitarized Zone as a last-minute addition to the planned itinerary.
Air Force One was escorted into Malaysia by two F-18s — an honor guard that was given on prior trips by Mideast host nations.
The packed multi-nation tour began with an equally busy day of transit.
Trump gave a 14-minute press conference to reporters over the Atlantic before a refueling stop in Germany.
During a stop in Qatar, Trump hosted Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and Prime Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in the cabin of Air Force One — as TV screens played a UFC cage match.
The Qatar stop focused on shoring up Trump’s Gaza peace plan, including finalizing an international peacekeeping force due to deploy to the war-torn Palestinian territory after Israel and Hamas agreed to a cease-fire as part of Trump’s 20-point framework to end the two-year war.
“You’re going to have peace in the Middle East. This is real peace,” the president said during the red-eye stopover. “This has never happened before — 3,000 years this has never happened.”
Trump said a multinational group of countries set to deploy to Gaza was “actually picking leaders right now.”
“The US doesn’t have to get much involved. They’re able to take care of it,” he said. “Very substantial nations. We have Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar. We have the three and then you have many behind them and even with them. Turkey is involved. Indonesia is involved. Jordan, Egypt. It’s an amazing group.”
Despite being passed over this month for the Nobel Peace Prize, conflict resolution remained high on the president’s agenda for the globe-circling trip.
The top-billed event in the Malaysian capital is a ceremonial peace-deal signing between Cambodia and Thailand, whose five-day border war in July was ended by Trump’s mediation and his threats of higher US tariffs after at least 66 deaths.
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