Emmanuel Macron failed to impress Donald Trump

The orca killer whale is known for playing with its prey before killing it, always with a smile. An image that came to mind on Monday when French president Emmanuel Macron arrived at the White House to plead the cause of Ukraine to a grinning President Donald Trump.

The French media is dutifully repeating the Elysée line that Macron had rekindled a bromance with the American president, but this is disconnected from reality. Macron returns to Paris today with, as far as I can tell, nothing but platitudes.

This was nothing like Macron’s visits to Washington during the Biden administration, when the French president used to deal with Biden’s sympathetic secretary of state Antony Blinken and flirt with Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden’s francophone press secretary.

The optics were calculated to put Macron in his place. Trump snubbed Macron when he failed to greet him on his arrival, snubbed him again by seating him uncomfortably in the Oval Office during a video-conference of G7 leaders and snubbed him again, off camera this time, when he ordered his United Nations ambassador to vote against a resolution, backed by Macron, demanding Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

Trump did all this with a smile, leaving Macron nonplussed. It was theater but the images underlined the growing crisis in the NATO alliance as Trump tilts towards Moscow and demands that Europe pay for its own security.

The tone was set when Macron arrived at the North Portico of the White House where he was welcomed by White House chief of protocol Monica Crowley, not by the president himself. Even Biden used to totter out when Macron rocked up. There were numerous and much anticipated vice-like handshakes, the first outside the Oval Office, which Macron endured with a rictus grin, a second inside when Trump appeared to be arm-wrestling his French homologue.

There were pleasantries. Trump talked of France as America’s oldest ally and congratulated Macron for the quality of the restoration of Notre-Dame cathedral. Macron recalled how the countries had fought shoulder together in two world wars.

But there’s no doubting who was the alpha male. The vote at the General Assembly, on the third anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion, an undisguised repudiation of everything that Europe has been demanding, was a vivid reminder that there’s a new sheriff in town.

Macron’s efforts to push back didn’t impress Trump. “Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine,” Trump said when the two men talked. “They [the Europeans] get their money back.”

Macron interrupted, putting his hand on Trump’s shoulder and saying in English, “No, in fact, to be frank, we paid. We provided real money, to be clear,” he said. Trump, smiling, made a skeptical face and waved his hand dismissively.

It was diplomacy live and direct. Macron is an actor but Trump took centre stage and had the best lines. He warned of the risk of nuclear war if the Ukraine conflict wasn’t settled. Macron promised to supply troops to assure any settlement in Ukraine, but exposed European weakness when pleaded for American security guarantees to cement any peace deal.

A proposal Trump abruptly dismissed. “Europe must take that central role and assure the long term security of Ukraine,” he said. That means European troops on the ground as an “assurance,” but the credibility of such a force is surely doubtful since at the moment only France, Britain and Sweden have signaled readiness to participate.

Macron has been a diminished figure for months after his ill-judged decision to call National Assembly elections that left him without a parliamentary majority. He had to be kept well away from his angry farmers when he opened the annual agriculture show in Paris, can only do walkabouts with pre-screened crowds and has been humiliated by Algeria, which is refusing to accept its citizens under deportation orders. Relations with Algeria are so poor they equate to a cold war. Macron used to go to Washington with the expectation that his opinions would be heeded. On Monday he was reduced to being supporting actor in Trump’s all-day photo opportunity.

On Thursday, it will be Keir Starmer’s turn, and it’s impossible to imagine his effort to “recalibrate” Trump’s policy on Ukraine is any more likely to succeed. Starmer has demanded toughened sanctions on Russia; Trump is hoping to do colossal trade deals with it.

Trump is unlikely to be any more impressed by Starmer’s pleading on tariffs. And the PM could well be put on the defensive following J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference warning free speech is in retreat in Britain.

Doubtless much perfume has been readied by Downing Street to positively spin this meeting but it’s going to be Trump not Starmer who sets the tone.