PARIS: Donald Trump explained the appeal in one sentence: \u201cVersailles is not gold leaf \u2014 Versailles is the real deal.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Emmanuel Macron, that was precisely the point.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday night, the French president threw open Louis XIV\u2019s palace to his US counterpart for a private reception, show and dinner marking America\u2019s 250th birthday. At a turbulent moment for the trans-Atlantic alliance, it could help Macron keep a personal channel open as the two navigate differences over Iran, Ukraine and tariffs.<\/p>\n
It already kept Trump from leaving a Group of Seven summit early, as he did last year in Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a fan of beautiful places,\u201d he told reporters, saying he had planned to leave earlier until \u201ca very nice man\u201d invited him to dinner. Upon arrival at the chateau, he posed for photographers in front of its golden doors.<\/p>\n
The welcome also served a practical purpose. In an interview earlier this week with France\u2019s TF1 television, Macron said Trump \u201cneeds to stay until the end\u201d to help complete the summit\u2019s agreements.<\/p>\n
It is perhaps the biggest soft-power flex available to a French president: Versailles, the Hall of Mirrors, the gardens of the Sun King and several centuries of carefully polished national grandeur.<\/p>\n
\u201cVersailles is a diplomatic tool and an instrument of influence,\u201d Macron said Wednesday, likening diplomacy to soccer. \u201cWhether I\u2019m playing at home or away, my goal is to score goals. And when I host other teams, I try to give them a nice welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n
France holds little economic or military sway over Washington, so pageantry is one of its few levers \u2014 even as its use elsewhere has brought mixed results at best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: Donald Trump explained the appeal in one sentence: \u201cVersailles is not gold leaf \u2014 Versailles is the real deal.\u201d For Emmanuel Macron, that was precisely the point. On Wednesday night, the French president threw open Louis XIV\u2019s palace to his US counterpart for a private reception, show and dinner marking America\u2019s 250th birthday. At …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":99226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":99227,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99216\/revisions\/99227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}