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Macron, after meeting with Trump, says he doesn’t conduct ‘diplomacy through tweets’

Posted at 6:20 PM, Nov 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-11 12:47:08-05

In an exclusive interview on “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” French President Emmanuel Macron said he prefers “having direct discussion” rather than discussing diplomacy through tweets with President Donald Trump.

His remarks came hours after Trump, who had just landed in Paris, used twitter to criticize Macron for proposing days earlier that more European military cooperation would be a good thing.

When Zakaria asked if Trump’s tweet was a mistake, the French President said:

“I always prefer having direct discussion or answering questions (than) making my diplomacy through tweets. But I think we had a very clear discussion. He is in favor of a better burden-sharing within NATO. I agree with that. And I think that in order to have a better burden-sharing, all of us do need more Europe.”

Trump arrived in Paris on Saturday for a 48-hour visit. Besides conducting talks with Macron, Trump will mark the 100th anniversary of the World War I armistice with leaders from across Europe at the Arc de Triomphe on Sunday.

In a joint news conference, Trump said he and Macron had a lot in common. When Zakaria asked what the two leaders had in common, Macron replied that both of them were outsiders, not “the classical politicians.”

“Probably because we are very much aligned in the fight against terrorism and we work very closely together following this line. We know where we disagree and we are very straightforward in that — on climate, on trade, on multilateralism — but we work very well together because we have very regular and direct discussions.”

Macron said he does not call himself a nationalist, as Trump does.

“I would say I’m a patriot. I do believe in the fact that our people are very important and having French people is different from German people. I’m not a believer in a sort of globalism without any differentiation. I think it doesn’t — it’s very inconsistent, and it’s extremely — it makes our people very nervous. But I’m not a nationalist. …

“I’m a strong believer in cooperation between the different peoples, and I’m a strong believer of the fact that this cooperation is good for everybody, where the nationalists are sometimes much more based on a unilateral approach and the law of the strongest, which is not my case. That’s probably our difference.”