French President Emmanuel Macron rolled out the red carpet to welcome Donald Trump to Paris on Thursday for an overseas trip the White House hopes will offer respite from a growing scandal back home.
The US president is to be Macron’s guest of honour during celebrations for Bastille Day on Friday, France’s national day, which will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of US involvement in World War I.
Accompanied by First Lady Melania Trump, the 71-year-old stepped onto French soil for the first time as president, hoping to leave behind weighty allegations that his family and inner circle colluded with Russia to win the 2016 US election.
The scandal has put his son and top aides in legal jeopardy, cast a pall over his efforts to remake the political agenda and may yet imperil his presidency.
Macron gave Trump a personal tour of Napoleon’s tomb at the Invalides military complex in central Paris, before the two men headed for talks.
The 39-year-old French leader has major disagreements with Trump on trade and climate change after the US president announced his plan to withdraw from the Paris global climate change agreement last month.
But the young and ambitious Macron has taken the lead in trying to build bridges, something criticised by some far-left politicians in France and viewed sceptically by some analysts.
“I’ve a strong disagreement with President Trump, and I’ve explained myself before… it’s a disagreement about the climate,” Macron said earlier Thursday during a press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I hope in the end to be able to persuade him,” Macron added.
The body language between the two men was warm, with Trump even giving Macron a lift from the museum back to the presidency in his eight-tonne car, known as The Beast.
Sources at the White House and in the French presidency insist ties are healthy even after a muscular handshake seen as a battle of wills between the two of them when they first met at a NATO summit in May.
Their talks are expected to focus on joint efforts to combat the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, where American and French troops are in action side-by-side.
Later Thursday, they and their wives Brigitte and Melania are set to share a Michelin-starred dinner at the Eiffel Tower, part of Macron’s charm offensive.
Trump complimented 64-year-old Brigitte, Macron’s former schoolteacher, during their visit to the museum. “You know, you’re in such great shape… beautiful,” he told her.
The US leader may struggle to stop his mind wandering back to explosive emails in which his oldest son Donald Trump Jr appeared to embrace the offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russian interlocutors.
Shortly before leaving Washington, he had to parry criticisms that his administration was in disarray and his legislative agenda on the rocks.
“The W. H. is functioning perfectly, focused on HealthCare, Tax Cuts/Reform & many other things. I have very little time for watching T.V.” he tweeted.
In London, Berlin, Brussels and Paris, European leaders are wondering how best to handle the new occupant of the White House, whose nationalist “America First” agenda has upended transatlantic relations.
Trump and Macron will watch Friday’s Bastille Day military parade together as they mark the centennial of the US entry into World War I in 1917.
More than 50,000 Americans died in what then-president Woodrow Wilson described as the “war to end all wars,” a conflict that forged the transatlantic alliance in steel.
Foreign affairs expert Bertrand Badie of Sciences Po university in Paris told AFP he was very doubtful Macron would be able to influence Trump in the future.
“It’s very difficult to play chess with a man whose strategy is a complete mystery and whose only consistency is his pursuit of American national interest,” he said.
Nearly 11,000 police officers will be on duty, with France in its highest state of alert after a string of terror attacks since 2015 that have killed more than 300 people.
And in early July, police charged a 23-year-old suspected far-right activist with plotting to assassinate Macron at the Bastille Day parade.
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