President Trump spent this past weekend in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Trump was criticized for not attending a WW I memorial service about 50 miles from Paris because of rainy weather on Saturday. The trip to Ainse-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial was canceled "due to scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather," the White House said, per a press pool report.
Trump explained:
The response was fast and furious on Twitter, the President's favorite medium. Nicholas Soames, the grandson of the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and a Conservative Party member of the British Parliament, tweeted,
He added the hashtag #hesnotfittorepresenthisgreatcountry = He’s not fit to represent this great country.
Michael Beschloss, the Presidential historian, tweeted a picture of President John F. Kennedy and the French President Charles de Gaulle getting soaked (without umbrellas) in Paris when they honored the war dead, in 1961.
Then on Sunday, more than sixty world leaders—presidents and prime ministers, kings and princes, from a third of all the nations on Earth—shared big black umbrellas as they marched together down the Champs-Élysées, in Paris, in unrelenting rain. They gathered to mark the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the fighting of the First World War, and to express global unity. Donald Trump was not among them. He drove to the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in the dry comfort of his limousine. Aides cited security.
The only leader that Trump seemed to connect with at the Armistice ceremony was the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who showed up late. When he joined the commemoration, the two men smiled at each other. Putin gave Trump a thumbs-up sign.
On Sunday, Trump got angry at French president Emmanuel Macron for his remarks at a ceremony honoring the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. Macron denounced rising nationalism around the world and called it a "betrayal of patriotism," with two of the world’s leading nationalists — Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin — in attendance.
Trump told advisers he considered Macron's comment a personal insult, and it came on the heels of a disagreement between the two leaders over Macron's call for a "true European army." At their bilateral meeting on Saturday, Trump appeared subdued and almost sullen. The "bromance" is over.
sources:
The New Yorker, November 12, 2018
Washington Post, November 14, 2018
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