Reporters had plenty of time to snap President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shaking hands yesterday.
Trump held on to Abe’s hand for a full 19 seconds during their handshake.
He patted Abe’s hand twice and at one point appears to jerk Abe toward him before he is released as an off-screen voice says, ‘Thank you press.’
Abe opened his eyes wide and turned away, appearing to be relieved the interaction had ended.
Trump, for his part, praised Abe’s ‘strong hands’ and greeted him with a hug.
Trump welcomed Abe with warm words of admiration, as he ditched previously hard-charging rhetoric toward Tokyo during a White House summit.
‘When I greeted him today at the car,’ Trump said after an Oval Office meeting, ‘I shook hands, but I grabbed him and hugged him, because that’s the way we feel.’
The odd political couple had lunch at the White House before heading to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for further talks and a round of golf on Saturday.
This was not the only strange moment of Abe’s White House visit.
During Abe’s press conference, Trump was not wearing an earpiece during the first part of a news conference on Friday with Japan’s PM.
Trump laughed and nodded as Abe delivered his opening remarks – even though did not have his translation device in while Abe was talking.
Donald Trump’s comment about Shinzo Abe’s hands comes following the months he spent on the campaign trail reassuring America that his hands (and private parts) are big enough.
It was revealed that Trump’s hands are indeed on the small side – at 7 ¼ inches, they are less than that of an average man.
But they’re even smaller considering an average American adult male is 5ft 10ins and Trump stands at 6ft 2.
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