The Guardian

Macron has taken a big risk with his trip to the US. Will the gamble pay off?

Despite their political differences, the French president has nurtured an unlikely relationship with his volatile US counterpart this week. No other world leader has managed this – but could it blow up in his face?
‘Arm wrestle? You know there’s only one winner’ … Macron and Trump. Photograph: Blondet Eliot-POOL/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock

Of all the extraordinary images and effusive displays of manly affection – hugs and kisses, grins and thumbs-ups, back-clapping, hand-clasping, yes, even tree-planting (of an oak, as it happens, from a wood in northern France where more than 1,800 US Marines lost their lives in the first world war) – it was the oddest.

Staring intently at his young guest’s immaculate suit, Donald Trump abruptly stretched out a finger, brushing something invisible off Emmanuel Macron’s collar. “We do have a very special relationship,” he said. “In fact, I’ll get that little piece of dandruff off – we have to make him perfect. He is perfect!”

The French president, understandably taken aback at a gesture breaching all known protocol for state visits, could do little but grin, rather manically. For French newspaper Libération, this was “embarrassing”. For Le Point, albeit tongue-in-cheek, it was “humiliation, a brilliantly executed blow, a stab disguised as an endearment”.

That may be overegging

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