There were manly, rough handshakes, thigh slaps and a few knowing laughs ostensibly shown on television. When Emmanuel Macron met Donald Trump in Washington on Monday, February 24, it was clear that the French president had a diplomatic advantage that his European counterparts lacked as he tried to avert a serious geopolitical crisis. As the first European Union head of state to make the trip to the United States, Macron knew, or thought he knew, the American billionaire. "I know him (...). He's someone I respect and who, I think, respects me, with whom I speak very easily," said the French president a few days before his conversation in the Oval Office, speaking on his social media.
Macron met the former real estate tycoon on many occasions during his first term, and spoke to him regularly on the phone. "Tell the head of state to always begin his remarks with a compliment to Donald Trump," suggested a White House adviser to a French diplomat before one of these phone calls, hoping to put the irascible and unpredictable American president in a good mood.
The Trump of 2025 is not the Trump of 2017. The storming of the Capitol by activists he encouraged in 2021 showed what he was capable of. He may have called the French president "a very special man," recalling with sparkling eyes, their 2017 dinner at Jules Verne, the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, but when it comes to substance, he conceded nothing.
Did Macron have the slightest chance of convincing Trump to remain on the side of Ukraine's allies? Was the "special relationship" the Frenchman had built with the American president a real advantage? "Diplomacy is all about human relations, and Emmanuel Macron had no illusions," said Gérard Araud, former French ambassador to the US. An "absolute seducer," in the words of the former diplomat, the French president is accustomed to "man-to-man" diplomacy, in which the emotional dimension is central. In a rather solitary exercise, Macron seeks to flatter or impress the "strong men" of the international stage. In July 2017, he welcomed Trump to the Champs-Elysées for the Bastille Day military parade, after having invited Vladimir Putin to Versailles in May. A language – the only one? – to which the American president is sensitive.
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