Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron shared a lengthy, awkward handshake as they sat in front of reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
The handshake, which resembled a cringey dap up, spanned six seconds and included them pulling at each other’s arms—a clear power struggle that was not masked by them sharing a laugh throughout.
Trump initiated the exchange by grabbing Macron’s arm after joking his counterpart had presented a deal on paper that was different from what they had previously discussed in person—albeit without an interpreter present.
“We came out and he started speaking the French deal,” Trump recalled. “We didn’t have an interpreter and he was going on and on and on, and I was just nodding ‘yes, yes, yes, yes. And [Macron] really sold me out because I got back the next day and I read the papers, and I said, ‘that’s not what we said!’”
After the leaders released each other’s hands, Macron gave Trump a pat on his right knee.
The shake is the latest instance of the world leaders trying to out-alpha one another in front of cameras, with another viral instance coming when they played handshake tug-of-war for 17 seconds in December outside the rebuilt Notre Dame Cathedral.
Trump and Macron’s first viral handshake came way back in 2017 and totaled nearly 30 seconds—an encounter commentators debated at length at the time as Macron appeared to briefly lose balance when Trump pulled him closer.
Monday’s Oval Office shake was not the first of the day, however. Trump, 78, greeted the 47-year-old Macron as he arrived at the White House with an even longer handshake that was captured on camera.
That initial shake lasted more than 10 seconds and included back-and-forth pulls by both men before they turned to face cameras and wave. The New York Times described the shake as being “vigorous” between two men “intent on asserting masculine dominance.”
The bilateral meeting between the men was, as expected, dominated by talks about Ukraine, Russia, and reaching a deal that would end the war. Trump, unlike his predecessor, has softened on Russia’s Vladimir Putin in recent weeks while launching personal attacks at Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Macron has remained steadfast in his support of Ukraine. He rebuffed a claim by Trump that Ukraine would be paying Europe back for its wartime support, asserting the money given was not a loan and adding that Europe funded 60 percent of the war effort. He also said at one point that Russia was the conflict’s “aggressor” as Trump stared blankly forward.
The latter point would have been nearly universally accepted as the U.S. viewpoint on the war, too, prior to Jan. 20. Since Trump returned to office, however, he has angered some Republicans by taking a softer stance on Putin while negotiating with the Russian president to reach a deal—possibly involving the valuable minerals available in his country and inside Ukraine.
