Saturday, July 15, 2017

Macron the diplomat greets Trump the bumbler

A lovely piece of writing in yesterday's Guardian.

The author Mary Dejevsky also writes in The Tablet. In the current issue she has an article on President Macron.

Within hours of Air Force One touching down in Paris there was fresh confirmation that no foreign visit by this US president comes without its risks. Betraying what the kindest interpretation would describe as an old-fashioned eye for the ladies – let’s face it, he is 71 – Donald Trump had strayed from the conventional introductions to compliment his host’s wife, Brigitte, on her figure. He then turned to her husband, the president of France, to remark: “She’s in such good physical shape. Beautiful, isn’t she beautiful?”
This unfortunate sequence will, no doubt, go down in Macron family legend. It may also be replayed for new generations of French diplomats to prepare them for – how shall we say? – the unconventional and unexpected. Nor was there any disaster. It would take more than a sexist, off-colour remark by a bumbling American president to faze this smooth young French head of state and his wife.

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