WASHINGTON — President Trump rarely says he needs his hand held for anything. Unless he’s around President Emmanuel Macron of France.
“He’s a great guy — smart, strong, loves holding my hand,” Mr. Trump joked about his French counterpart in an Oval Office interview with The New York Times on Wednesday.
“People don’t realize, he loves holding my hand — that’s good!” the president said of Mr. Macron, who invited Mr. Trump to attend Bastille Day festivities in Paris last week.
The budding warmth in their relationship follows an initially awkward first encounter at a NATO meeting in Brussels in May, during which Mr. Macron firmly shook Mr. Trump’s hand to signal that he would not be intimidated. In the weeks after, Mr. Trump said he intended to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a move he anticipated would frustrate Mr. Macron.
Instead, the French president called Mr. Trump a few weeks ago and invited him to join the annual Bastille Day celebration, which also marked the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entrance into World War I.
“I said, ‘Do you think it’s a good thing for me?’” Mr. Trump recalled on Wednesday of asking Mr. Macron about attending the festivities, given how his decision on the Paris accord might have been received.
But Mr. Macron assured him that it would not be a problem, Mr. Trump said, and urged him to come watch France’s display of military might, including flyovers by warplanes, soldiers in period uniforms and tanks rolling down cobblestone streets.
“I have a great relationship with him; he’s a great guy,” Mr. Trump said. He also called the Bastille Day parade “beautiful.”
The two presidents watched the parade from a viewing stand, from which Mr. Trump said he could see all the way up the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. Afterward, standing together in a plaza, Mr. Macron grabbed Mr. Trump’s hand, and appeared reluctant to let go. So, Mr. Trump recounted, the two presidents stood there, holding hands for several minutes, as Mr. Macron’s wife, Brigitte, joined them.
“It was one of the most beautiful parades I’ve ever seen, and in fact we should do one here down Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Mr. Trump, a military enthusiast who at one point hoped to include a display by the armed forces in his inaugural parade.
Mr. Trump also said that his relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany had been misinterpreted as chilly.
In fact, Mr. Trump said, “We get along very well.” He added that a photograph of him sitting with Ms. Merkel in the Oval Office, without a handshake, had been misread as a stilted encounter. He said that he had not heard someone call out to her to shake hands, and that they had worked well together earlier.
Mr. Trump also said he had deeply enjoyed his travels abroad as president.
“I have had the best reviews on foreign land,” he said.
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