They say the handshake originated as a gesture designed to prove that both participants were unarmed, but US President Donald Trump has rewritten that rule along with all the others.
In Trump’s hands, the handshake is a weapon.
Thanks to the newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, we have confirmation that the rest of the world’s leaders are fighting back.
Macron’s admission that his white-knuckle clinch with Trump — in which the two men appeared to be engaged in a squeezing duel that saw the US president break off first — was “not innocent” is hardly a surprise.
His thinking was plain to see, as he crushed Trump’s hand until the latter’s fingers seemed to quiver for mercy.
No less apparent was the French leader’s swerve to avoid shaking hands with Trump when meeting his NATO partners, pointedly preferring to greet German Chancellor Angela Merkel first.
Macron had clearly clocked the way the US leader uses body language as a form of warfare — and resolved to fight him in kind.
For Trump, the handshake is less a gesture of peace than a declaration of superiority.
Note the grip he gave his US Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, yanking the judge toward him as if he were a pet dog on a leash.
Trump made a similar show of alpha-male supremacy with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, clasping and tugging at Abe’s hand for a full 18 seconds — and prompting a memorable eye-roll from the Japanese leader.
Then-FBI director James Comey was on the receiving end of a similar attempt to demonstrate ownership.
“You work for me,” Trump seemed to signal as he pulled Comey in with that signature tug and an attempted hug.
It has since emerged that the move appalled Comey, who had sought to hide in the curtains rather than be subject to such a display.
All of this is quite a shift in the art of the political handshake.
Before Trump, any controversy over the gesture usually centered on whether it would happen or not, and whether it would be in public or private: Think of then-Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams and then-British prime minister Tony Blair. Only rarely was the manner of the handshake a point of contention.
Then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 won plaudits at home for the visible reluctance of his handshake with then-Palestinian president Yasser Arafat: He had made the move, but also showed his discomfort.
Trump has upended all that, withholding handshakes from the US’ friends — he ignored Merkel’s requests to press palms during a White House photo opportunity — but showing physical warmth to assorted dictators and adversaries of the US, from Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi to Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov.
Still, Trump’s fellow world leaders have been swift to learn the new rules.
Canadan Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went for a preemptive grip of Trump’s forearm, making any Gorsuch-style yank impossible, while Macron fought alpha-male fire with fire.
Thanks to Trump, what was once a gesture to indicate being without weapon has triggered a new unarmed race.
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