Trump is 78 years old, has diaper plumbing problems and gets bored easily. Why doesn’t he retire? He would be surrounded by his adoring fans and he could live off of all of his money for the rest of his days.

I’m curious if this is going to be the way leaders treat Trump going forward. And by curious I mean hopeful. Because that debacle in the Oval Office when Elon Musk completely owned him I think has made it clear that powerful people can dominate this man fairly easily. The guy who used to terrorize people in 2016 on the debate stage is gone. He’s a dotering old man who doesn’t even know where he is half the time. Interviews like this with other world leaders should be able to dominate the conversation fairly easily.

Really don’t need to watch, thanks for the infobite that the event occurred I guess?

WATCH: A politician and a B-list reality show character

Trump was quick to shut down the press conference after that.

That ‘hand/palm wave’ he did too, he really wanted to counter what Macron was saying.

Video was a good watch, short and sweet.

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Two pigs don’t praise any of these two they are the scum of earth

Macron’s strategy was to spend as much time as possible with Trump, hoping to use their relationship to advocate for Ukraine and Europe.

So, I’m not French or European, so this is an outsider’s standpoint.

But I’ve read past material in the French media claiming that Macron has historically strongly favored personal discussions between himself and foreign leaders, having processes that cut out the French foreign office and relied upon his personal interactions. I believe the phrase they used was “hyperpersonalized” diplomacy.

kagis

The article I was thinking of was much longer and focused specifically on France, but here’s another talking about it and using the same “hyperpersonalized” term, so I don’t think that it’s just that author:

https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-ukraine-war-vladimir-putin-russia-diplomacy-france-documentary/

The film confirms what Elysée hacks have known for a long time — that Macron runs France’s foreign policy single-handedly with a small team of advisers. During the 115 minutes of the documentary, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian makes an appearance just once and is never filmed speaking. It’s Macron’s diplomatic advisor Bonne who discusses with Macron the French president’s phone calls with Putin, who listens in on the calls and discusses the Elysée’s official statements on the subject. Macron’s advisers aren’t seen challenging the president in any meaningful way.

“[The film shows] a diplomacy that is operated by a handful of people, as if they were running a start-up, as if everything could be resolved with the mobile numbers of ‘Olaf’, ‘Volodymyr’ and ‘Vladimir’, (without neglecting the importance of direct contacts of course),” Le Monde’s Washington correspondent Piotr Smolar wrote on Twitter.

French presidents traditionally have more control over their country’s foreign policy than other western leaders who have to wrestle with strong parliaments or foreign affairs ministries. But for Duclos, the documentary exposes the weaknesses of a hyper-centralized diplomatic machine.

This is talking about a French documentary, which might have driven the article that I read as well.

I don’t know whether that’s a fair, objective assessment. I don’t have the familiarity with French political currents to make that call. But it at least sounds plausible to me.

The problem is that Macron’s time leading France has seen several major foreign policy fiascos for France, and a number of them center around what looks to me like Macron getting an incorrect assessment via that personal interaction route.

• Macron personally interacted with Australian leadership surrounding the submarine deal, and was confident that French defense contractors had it in the bag. Then, AUKUS went through, and Macron in particular was blindsided.

• Macron aimed at personal phone calls with Putin in the runup to the invasion of Ukraine, and was convinced that Russia would not involve Ukraine and that he could personally influence Putin.

I think that there was one other big issue, something where he was negotiating with another EU member, but I can’t recall what it was now.

There have also been a few articles that have made it to the English-language press on smaller issues that have made me a little suspicious that Macron hasn’t, perhaps, been as effective as someone in the diplomatic corps might have been.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/20/europe/macron-cyclone-mayotte-french-swear/index.html

Macron tells cyclone-hit Mayotte islanders to be grateful they are French after facing jeers

French President Emmanuel Macron has faced jeers from locals on the cyclone-battered French overseas territory of Mayotte, telling them they should be “happy to be in France, because if it wasn’t France you’d be 10,000 times even more in the s***.”

Like, Macron might be perfectly right on the financial side, but I am deeply suspicious that that was not the best statement to make, regardless.

Then I remember some point where he was calling Italy a “rogue member of the EU” or similar. At this point, there was Article 7 activity against both Poland and Hungary, and the UK was in the Brexit process. I remember commenting something like “whatever the merit or lack thereof of attacking Italy, you need to end some of the conflicts in the EU. With this, you have one of the six largest members leaving the EU, you’re trying to strip voting rights from another, and you’re calling another a ‘rogue member’. You cannot have this many fights at once. You will paralyze the EU.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macrons-italian-snubs/

Now, okay. I have Trump running my country, and I think that Trump is considerably more objectionable than Macron as a diplomat. But I am hesitant to say that Macron doing one-on-ones or personally-driving diplomacy with foreign leaders has been all that great for France.

Add this to the fact that Trump suspended the taxes with Canada and Mexico to gain nothing.

Macron interrupts to say to the face of the orange thug that Europe provided 60% of the money and clearly he is there for negotiations. As he puts it, it is russia who should pay back : first pay compensations to Ukraine, then other countries.
Next a journalist asks the orrange nazi if russia will pay since they are the aggressor … no answer + diversion + end of press meeting

This is how everyone should handle trump and his ilk at every opportunity. Talk over him, call him out on obvious lies, chuckle at him when he says idiotic things. He has this hero status with his followers that could be chipped away at if he’s the subject of serious, casual ridicule. Not the stupid “mango mussolini” “lord cheeto” junk, but the stuff that makes him feel self-conscious and lash out like a stupid, bumbling old man. This has been the most successful strategy whenever people have employed it.

Time for the EU to break free of the US. The US is now aligned with Russia, North Korea, and Hungary among others.

unsurprisingly Trump has no fucking idea what is actually going on in this war

I wish he would have throat-punched Mango Mussolini.

Great, I am just annoyed that his English is so hard to understand.

Now the average MAGNA person can’t understand that

What does that fucking moron mean when he says “We’ll get some land back”? It seems to me that he thinks his allies land actually belongs to him. I know America likes to portray itself as the big boss of the west but that’s just make-believe, man… Like movies and shit.