They call him the Trump whisperer. France’s President Emmanuel Macron – who believes his diplomacy, persuasion and personal charm can sway the thinking of his US counterpart, Donald Trump – arrives in Washington on Monday for the deeply symbolic first state visit by a foreign leader since Trump came to power.
The stakes are high, with Macron expected to raise future plans on Syria after the recent joint missile strikes, as well as France’s determination to preserve the Iran nuclear deal which Trump wants to quit. Macron said last week that he had convinced Trump to keep troops in Syria for the long term but was quickly rebuffed by the White House.
But Elysée officials said the highly choreographed visit, including an intimate dinner with the Trumps at Mount Vernon, was aimed foremost at cementing what they called an “intense, close relationship built on trust”, underlined by Macron and Trump’s daily phone conversations over Syria strikes.
Macron’s drive for influence in Washington is built on a surprisingly close relationship forged between two men who would appear polar opposites.
Trump, 71, is an anti-globalist and a protectionist elected on a pledge to put America First, who had once appeared to favour Macron’s opponent, the far-right Marine Le Pen. Macron, 40, believes in a kind of cosmopolitan globalism and is an ardent pro-European.
The intellectual French president is the same age as Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr, and believes a head of state should read literature or philosophy every night lest they lose touch with reality. US observers wonder if Trump can finish a book. And yet Macron, driven by a keen sense of pragmatism, has built up perhaps the closest personal relationship to Trump of any world leader.
“What’s the secret of Trump whispering in 2018?” asked Gérard Araud, the French ambassador to Washington, as he attempted to sum up the Macron-Trump relationship at an Atlantic Council event in Washington this month. He acknowledged that although the presidents had different personalities, they were both “disruptors” whose elections had surprised and challenged the old political order in their countries. And both men can be brutally frank. “Donald Trump has never hidden what he thinks, and Emmanuel Macron is the same – so they have built a dialogue,” he said.
But the American media talk of “bromance” irks French diplomats who view the smiling and backslapping on display when Macron grandly invited Trump to Paris’s Bastille Day military parade last summer as just clever, logical diplomacy. “No it’s not ‘bromance’,” Araud said. “It’s simply that there is a common interest on both sides to reach an understanding. Any French president wants to have a good relationship with the president of the US. It’s nothing new.”
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
