BASTILLE DAY PARADE
U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron are seen on a large screen during a Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris on Friday.
Paris — A muscular handshake that turned their knuckles white seems to be giving way to a budding friendship between Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron.
The unexpected bromance between the leaders of America and France was on full display for the world Friday at the annual Bastille Day military parade and celebration in Paris. This year the event coincided with the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I.
Trump spent a large portion of his day and a half in the French capital in the embrace of Macron, who went to extraordinary lengths to impress the U.S. president by turning a day of national pride into a celebration of American patriotism and friendship between the two countries.
Trump and Macron exchanged many handshakes during the course of Trump’s first visit to France as president, perhaps none more telling than the one they shared after the parade. As Trump prepared to head home to the United States, the leaders clasped hands and held on to each other as they walked. Trump at one point pulled the smaller Macron off balance and held fast as they approached their wives. Even then, Trump held on to Macron’s hand as he shook hands with Macron’s wife, Brigitte.
They appeared to have moved beyond that tense introduction in May, when a white-knuckle handshake that Macron later said was meant to show he’s no pushover was widely interpreted as a sign of the fraught relations to come. Trump’s brand of “America First” politics had unsettled some European allies.
But the body language in Paris this week suggested their relationship has moved to a new level. Both seemed to minimize differences in order to focus on areas where they can work together, such as the crisis in Syria and Mideast security.
Macron, in closing the parade, publicly thanked the U.S. for coming to France’s aid during the war, saying “nothing will ever separate us.”
“The presence at my side of the president of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump, and of his wife, is the sign of a friendship across the ages,” Macron said. Trump made no remarks at the conclusion of the parade, but he returned the kindness in a statement released as Air Force One flew back to the U.S.
“America and France will never be defeated or divided,” Trump said, adding that it was his “high honor” to commemorate, on French soil, France’s most historic day and the 100th anniversary of the entry of the United States into World War I.