Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

En marche

Where the US President goes his French counterpart soon follows

Remember the never-ending handshake? It was 14 July 2017, Bastille Day, and Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump opened their formal relationship as leaders of their respective countries by interlocking palms and refusing to let go. They kept at it for a good 30 seconds. They didn’t release even as Trump began kissing Macron’s wife.

It looked like the beginnings of a bitter rivalry. But Trump and Macron weren’t clashing. They were flirting. The night before, the two men — plus wives — had had an intimate dinner in the Eiffel Tower, and they bonded. A great bromance had been born.

For all his posturing, Macron treated the US President like an emperor in Paris. Later this month the Macrons are going to Washington, and Trump will return the favour by honouring them with his administration’s first full state dinner. Macron and Trump now dance cheek-to-diplomatic-cheek, as George W. Bush and Tony Blair once did. Theresa May can only look on, wondering what might have been.

This week, President Trump — facing all sorts of domestic problems and a possible trade war with China — decided it might be handy to divert attention abroad and talk tough to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad over the reported use of chemical weapons. So he called Macron, who is having his own difficulties on the home front, and they decided on a ‘strong, joint response’ against Assad.

The French president, who used to work for Rothschild bank, understands how to deal with billionaires. He knows that to keep ’em keen you have to treat ’em mean. The Bastille Day shake-off was in fact Trump’s attempt to get even. A few weeks earlier, during a photo-op at a Nato summit in Brussels, Macron had gripped Trump’s hand so tightly his knuckles turned white.

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