Friendship tree planted last year by Trump, Macron is reportedly dead
PARIS — The symbolic tree that President Donald Trump and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, planted at the White House last year has died, according to French media reports.
The small oak, which came from the historic Belleau Wood to the east of Paris, where American forces halted a German counteroffensive in the waning months of World War I, was a gift from Mr. Macron to Mr. Trump during his April 2018 state visit.
As Mr. Macron wrote on Twitter at the time, the tree “will be a reminder at the White House of these ties that bind us.” Instead, the dead tree is now seen as a reminder of an amicable relationship that began as “le bromance” and has since become rather antagonistic.
A major turning point in the Macron-Trump relationship came during the same visit when the two presidents gathered with their wives on the White House lawn to plant the tree. Mr. Macron had flown across the Atlantic to try to convince Mr. Trump not to abandon the Iran deal, a signature policy achievement of the Obama administration.
The French president, who had won in a landslide the year before and who is the youngest head of state in modern French history, clearly believed in his own ability to charm.
Compared with other European leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Macron seemed to get along quite well with the mercurial Mr. Trump at the time, having delighted him in July 2017 with a massive military parade in Paris that Mr. Trump then tried, unsuccessfully, to recreate at home.
So the young French president — who had already failed to convince Mr. Trump to keep the United States in the 2015 Paris Climate Accords — decided to test his luck on Iran.
Mr. Trump clearly relished leading Mr. Macron along, but ultimately stood his ground despite Mr. Macron’s entreaties. In one memorable scene, Mr. Trump flicked what appeared to be a piece of dandruff off Mr. Macron’s lapel in front of White House photographers, a perceived reinforcement of the power dynamic at play.
The death of the tree was first reported in France’s Le Monde newspaper last week, during Mr. Trump’s visit to the beaches of Normandy for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.
According to those reports, after it was planted, the tree had to be uprooted and subjected to a normal quarantine period for a plant brought from a foreign country to the United States. But it apparently died during the quarantine period and was never replaced or replanted.
Mr. Trump’s recent D-Day visit is viewed as having gone fairly well in terms of relations with Mr. Macron.