Donald Trump dished to The Post on the power-grip handshakes he shared with French President Emanuel Macon during their meeting over the weekend — with the President-Elect insisting it was no big deal.
“It’s just a firm shake. He understands that. It’s just a firm shake,” Trump told The Post.
Their handshakes became the talk online Saturday when they met up before Notre Dame cathedral’s re-opening ceremony in Paris, with Trump administering two particularly aggressive iterations of his characteristic grip as he and Macron posed for the press.
During their first shake, Trump grabbed Macron’s hand in a tight fist and pulled him in close for an embrace, before holding the French president’s hand for an extended time as photographers snapped away.
Later, Trump clasped Macron in an over-handed grip and angled his arm well above the French president in a distinctly domineering pose.
But the pair also talked policy, with Trump saying they were in agreement about NATO nations “paying their fair share” towards the European military alliance.
“I said NATO is good as long as they pay their bills, but they gotta pay their bills, because you know, when I got involved with NATO nobody paid, and then they paid after I got involved,” Trump told The Post.
The presidents previously sparred over NATO during Trump’s last term, with Macron in 2019 saying US leadership had left the alliance “brain dead.”
Trump, in turn, called members of the alliance “delinquent” for their contributions to its defense budget, and evoked the fFrst and Second World Wars to claim France needed NATO more than any other European nation.
Now it seems the two leaders are trying to make amends ahead of a new Trump era.
“He agrees with me,” Trump said, adding that he complimented Macron on the the work France did restoring the Notre Dame after it was ravaged by a devastating fire in 2019.
“He’s a good man, he did a good job,” Trump said.
“I told him, ‘You have no idea how good a job you did on that chapel.’ That’s very hard to do. Painstaking.”
