The New Yorker:
Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump met for the first time at a NATO summit in Brussels last spring, just a couple of weeks after Macron’s election to the French Presidency. If there had been a fight card for the encounter, it would have pitted globalism vs. nationalism, progressivism vs. populism, optimism vs. declinism, youth vs. age. At a meeting in the morning, the two men tugged at each other’s forearms as though they were trying to pull a rope over a line in the sand. That afternoon, at a photo call with the rest of the group, Macron performed a cheeky little fake-out before finally extending his hand to Trump, who yanked it as though he were trying to start a chainsaw. Handshakeologists the world over were thus surprised when, a couple of months later, Macron invited Trump to France.
Macron, speaking of the historic alliance between the two countries, “which fully justifies the presence of President Trump today and tomorrow in Paris,” gave Trump a grand reception. There was a Bastille Day parade with vintage tanks and a flyover of the Arc de Triomphe; the Presidents and their wives dined at the Eiffel Tower on a solicitously bland menu of filet of beef and chocolate soufflé with chocolate ice cream. By the next day, Trump—who, in previous months had pulled out of the Paris climate accords, claimed that parts of Paris were so “radicalized and vicious” that the police refused to go there, and expressed his admiration for the far-right leader Marine Le Pen—was praising the French leader as “a great President, a tough President.” Macron—who had previously trolled Trump over his environmental policies, unfurling a “Make Our Planet Great Again” meme on Twitter—now said, “I very much respect the decision taken by President Trump” on the Paris accords, even if he disagreed with it, and affirmed that he and Trump shared a “common red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Thus was born the idea that there exists some kind of special closeness not between America and France, but between Trump and Macron.
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