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What an analysis of facial movements, audio tones and temporal flows in conversations between world leaders and President Trump reveals.
In a recent episode of Cut the Clutter, Shekhar Gupta of The Print observed that understanding what President Donald Trump says can be difficult to understand. This prompted me to wonder what might happen if we were to use Al tools to go beyond what he says to how he says it, seeing what his subtle facial and auditory signals might reveal.
Around 38% of our emotions are expressed via tone of our voice, while Dr Paul Ekman’s Facial Action Coding System (FACS) offers us a way to understand a person’s facial emotions. So last night, I pulled up recordings of media interactions between President Trump and other world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, US billionaire Elon Musk and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I analyzed these videos – which ranged from 18 to 48 minutes – using a variety of Al tools.
The analysis looked at eye and lip movements, smiles and smirks, head movements, vocal tones and variations, and temporal flows of thematic topics in the conversations’ transcripts. The analysis also looked at comments and reactions to the videos. Without going too deeply into the maths, let’s look at what we found.
Based on vocal analysis, both Prime Minister Modi (24% versus the average of other conversations) and Prime Minister Starmer (27% versus the average) had “happier” conversations with President Trump, although the facial joy visible on Trump’s face was 56% higher during the meeting with Modi than with Starmer.
In contrast, the conversation with President Zelensky showed a very high proportion of “sadness” (88%) measured in the audible tones, with 51% higher temporal spikes of projective force in voice versus all other conversations we analyzed. The dominant tone in the meeting with Musk was calm between the two (although in fairness, the context and setting of their telecast appearance was different from the other meetings in the analysis).
Prime Minister Modi’s conversations started with strong, happy audible tonals and facials from President Trump, with spikes around references to stated “big purchases” by India. Mr Modi’s responses had some undertones of anxiousness, but with sprinkles of happier facial exchanges between the two. (Modi +30%, Trump +55% versus no expression.) President Trump displayed happier facial movements and vocal fluctuations when exchanging appreciation for each other.
We observed that 67% of public reactions to YouTube video of Modi–Trump meetings were positive, with themes coming out of public commenter conversations centering on appreciation for the translators, references to Bangladesh problems, Russia and China. There were some negative references (>5%) around the fact that Prime Minister Modi did not speak in English.
By comparison, the meeting between President Trump and Prime Minister Starmer began with the exchange of several smiles but with a higher level of anxiety in the vocal tones of the two leaders. Throughout the conversation, Prime Minister Starmer has much higher instances of smiles, though this could be attributed to his being British nature!
Mentions of a “special relationship” by Prime Minister Starmer exhibited strong tones (50% spike), as were references to a UK/US trade deal, which also delivered some happy but mellowed undertones. President Trump exhibited strong positive tonal spikes around talk of a state visit, while references to President Biden and the EU produced strong spikes of disgust.
In terms of mutual visible attention, President Trump’s displayed the highest average level in the meeting with the UK leader (68 from Trump versus 70 from Starmer, with 100 being highest). President Macron received very high attention from President Trump but displayed low levels of visible attention for the US leader (65 from Trump versus 30 from Macron)
Despite a stronger performance during the televised interaction, Prime Minister Starmer got negative reviews of his meetings from public commenters, partly influenced by internal issues of the UK. His response to Vice President JD Vance’s criticism of free speech fetched some positivity but even more negativity (2:9), partly influenced by a higher presence of right-wing UK-based commenters in the comment strings we analyzed.
Moving on, we looked at the “popular” TV debacle of international diplomacy – the meeting between Trump, Vance and Zelensky in the Oval office. Already under pressure due to the elongated war and its emotional toll, concerns about the rare-earth agreement and distrust in American reliability given increasing friction with the new administration, Zelensky’s facial cues and auditory tones were laden with sadness and a subtle layer of fear (11 times higher versus all other meetings we analyzed).
Trump began with very low emotional energy, but did have sad auditory tones with regards to deaths in the war, while being strong in appreciation of Ukrainian armed forces. Zelensky began with low auditory energy with sad undertones when referencing “deal and security guarantees” and air defence support, but his sadness peaked at 36% during references to the deaths of Ukrainian children.
Trump’s auditory signals peaked around criticism of the Biden administration and Europe not doing enough for Ukraine, which led to minor smiley taunts when Zelensky tried to disagree and defend Europe. This provided one of the first signals in the televised encounter of what was to come. His reference to including Europe on negotiating table around the 31ˢᵗ minute also added to the buildup.
The famous suit question amounted to an increase in facial metrics related to surprise on President Zelensky’s face, followed by a strong tonal response. Public response to this incident – which came up in around 15% of commenter conversations – generated 10:1 positive opinion for Zelensky.
It was Vice President JD Vance’s comments around the 40ᵗʰ minute and President Zelensky’s replies that led to a 35% spike in his facial discomfort – possibly reverberating in his comment that “America will feel it”. Before the 40ᵗʰ minute, Zelensky’s facial anger was positively correlated (+0.62) with his references to President Vladimir Putin and the Russians. But after the 40ᵗʰ minute, although his facial anger dropped by 38%, it shifted direction to Vice President Vance. We were unable to fully analyze Vance, due to him not being covered adequately by and the angle of the cameras.
Zelensky’s reference to the past dealings with the Obama and Biden administrations added to the discomfort, as expressed via a 72% increase in stronger auditory tones from President Trump when speaking about them.
These conversations yielded negative opinions for both sides, with supporters of Zelensky, Trump and Vance defending their leaders. Between Vance and Trump, the vice president received 62% of all negativity directed towards the Americans, with Mr Trump largely viewed as the lesser part of the problem in the conversation and Mr Vance being blamed for the trigger. Trump supporters, however, expressed appreciation for the vice president being outright and straightforward.
To summarize, the analysis shows us a few important lessons.
- The American president is quite transactional, with financial benefits being the most important theme to generate his pleasure.
- Throwing in ego-boosting “big” events can make him happy and gain his warmth. It’s best to lead with these to get him in the right mood!
- The EU stands high in his list of dislikes, and don’t refer to Biden or Obama if you want to be in his good books.
- Lastly, know your stature before you respond. And if you do respond, do it with a British smile!
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint.
Great 👍🏻