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Did The Male Insecurity Of France's President Doom The Paris Deal?

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The media cheered when French President Macron shook U. S. President Trump’s hand really hard. Now they’re reporting it helped doom their beloved Paris deal.
You knew President Donald Trump’s trip abroad went well because the American media focused on hand-holding and handshakes instead of the dramatic changes in foreign policy toward American interests. Did Melania brush away her husband’s hand? Did you notice the power and strength of French President Emmanuel Macron’s handshake with Trump?
It was Macron’s handshake that enraptured the American media. They covered it from every angle, happy that someone on the global stage was standing up to Trump. The Washington Post, as of last count, has 41 articles mentioning “Macron” and “handshake, ” dissecting it from every angle. A recent one explained the issue here:
Politico listed it as No. 1 of the seven most “Macho Moments” of Macron:
CNN said that with his handshake, “ Macron had faced down Trump ” and that his handshake “looked more like an arm wrestle.”
You’ d have to have a heart of stone to not laugh, then, when reading the end of this almost-entirely anonymously sourced report from the Washington Post about what that handshake got Macron. Remember the context was that the G7 leaders were trying to make sure that the United States stayed in the Paris climate deal. According to the Post’s anonymous sources going back and forth about how ineffective the lobbying to stay in the climate deal was:
Oh, Macron. Macron, Macron.
However stupid men and their handshakes can be — and this goes for both our president and France’s — if you’ re going to play the intimidation game, you better have negotiating advantages to go along with it. Global leaders would be well advised to pay less attention to the media’s obsessions with regard to Trump and more to the real world, where American power is a force to be dealt with.
Did the young new president of France need to massage his own ego up by squeezing Trump’s hand really hard to firm up Trump’s resolve to say au revoir to the Paris deal? Maybe, maybe not. But it did give progressive journalists something vapid to obsess over instead of coming to grips with the fact that Trump is in charge and setting policy, and they’ re not. And isn’ t that what’s really important?

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