U.S. President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron saw each other recently, and it was not just an ordinary meeting. The two government leaders attended the annual Bastille Day celebration in Paris and shared an unusually long handshake that caught the attention of many.

On July 14, Trump and Macron were in Paris to join the military parade in line with the annual Bastille Day celebrations. Although Trump is known for his interesting handshakes with other government leaders, the one he shared with the French leader recently was the most unusual yet.

Trump and Macron have a history of long handshakes. The first time they met in Brussels for the NATO summit, both leaders made headlines because of how they engaged each other through their handgrips. While they were shaking hands during the summit, Trump aggressively tugged Macron's arm toward his direction. Meanwhile, on their second handshake, none of them wanted to relent first in an apparent attempt to show virility, which resulted in a long, awkward handshake.

At the recent Bastille Day celebration in France, the two leaders met again and shook hands. This time, their handshake lasted for 30 seconds. Just like the first time, none of them wanted to concede so their handshake got the whole world talking once again.

Trump and Macron's simple handshake turned a bit awkward that it reached the point where they were holding each other's hands while walking down the Champs-Elysses. After the first five seconds of their handshake, Trump pulled Macron a little closer, just like he did in their first meeting in Brussels. After the French leader lost his balance for a time, he shook hands with Trump again, this time from side to side.

It was only after a few more seconds that Trump and Macron ended their 30-second handshake, after the U.S. president greeted Macron's wife with a kiss and hug.</s>The head of the French armed forces, General Pierre de Villiers, has quit his post after publicly clashing with Emmanuel Macron over proposed budget cuts.

In a statement from his office, Mr de Villiers said he had sought to maintain a French defence force able to do an increasingly difficult job within the financial constraints imposed on it.

“In the current circumstances I see myself as no longer able to guarantee the robust defence force I believe is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people, today and tomorrow, and to sustain the aims of our country,” he said.

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He added that, as a result, he had tendered his resignation to Mr Macron and that it had been accepted by the new President.

It came days after Mr Macron watched a show of France’s military force alongside Donald Trump in a grand parade marking Bastille Day.

The state visit, which saw the two presidents mark the centenary of the US’s intervention in the First World War, acted as a temporary distraction from dissatisfaction within the defence ministry.

There was widespread speculation that Mr de Villiers could step down in protest ahead of a formal meeting scheduled on Friday with Mr Macron, who is proposing €850m (£750m) worth of military cuts.

It is part of the French President’s programme aiming to achieve €60bn (53bn) of savings over five years – while upholding an election pledge to cut taxes.

Last week, his government announced plans to cut the defence budget for 2017 to bring France’s deficit below the EU limit of 3 per cent GDP.

Mr de Villiers was said to have told a parliamentary committee he would not let the government “f*** with” him on spending cuts.

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“I won’t let myself be f***ed like that,” he said in the closed-door hearing, according to sources.

“I may be stupid, but I know when I’m being had.”

On Monday, a government spokesman told France Info that the French President and Mr de Villiers would “take the decision together” about the general’s future.

In his first defence policy speech last week, Mr Macron said he would not tolerate public dissent from the military.

“For me it’s undignified to wash dirty linen in public,” he told dozens of top army officers and their families in a traditional annual address.

“I have made commitments, I am your boss… what I like is the sense of duty, the sense of discretion that has taken our army to where it is today. And what I sometimes find hard to tolerate in certain sectors, I tolerate it even less when it comes to our military.”

Mr Macron then raised eyebrows with a newspaper interview in Le Journal du Dimanche, saying: “If the military chief of staff and the President are opposed on something, the military chief of staff goes.”

The former chief of the French armed forces, Henri Bentégeat, said that the way the new President was imposing his authority “will leave marks”.

“You can’t publicly question a military leader like that in front of his subordinates,” he told Le Monde.

But Mr Macron appears to have heeded calls for higher military spending by defence officials and opposition leaders by pledging to increase expenditure from 2018 onwards.

France’s defence spending is scheduled to reach €34.2bn (£30bn) next year, including €650m (£575m) for external operations, up from €32.7bn (£29bn) in 2017, Mr Macron said.

“It’s a considerable effort, considering the current context of budgetary constraints,” he added, after pledging to raise France’s total defence budget up to 2 per cent GDP from the current 1.7 per cent by 2025.

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Reuters 35/50 6 August 2019 Paleontologist Naturalis Anne Schulp takes part in the construction of the skeleton of the Tyrannosaurus Rex called Trix in Naturalis in Leiden, The Netherlands. After a month-long tour of Europe, Trix is home in time for the opening of the new museum. AFP/Getty 36/50 5 August 2019 Flowers paying tribute to the eight-year-old boy who died after he was pushed under a train at Frankfurt am Main's station. The horrific crime happened last week and has led politicians to call for heightened security. AFP/Getty 37/50 4 August 2019 Mourners take part in a vigil near the border fence between Mexico and the US after a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso killed 20 people. The suspected gunman behind shooting is believed to be a 21-year-old white man called Patrick Crusius. Reuters 38/50 3 August 2019 Pramac Racing's rider Jack Miller in action during a practice session at the Motorcycling Grand Prix of the Czech Republic. 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This is to coincide with his state of the nation address in Manila. AFP/Getty

The unprecedented row and resignation has shocked France, where the military tends to refrain from political comment, earning itself the nickname “la grande muette”.

Jean-Jacques Bridey, chairman of the parliamentary committee on defence, was among those announcing his opposition to the cuts “while our men risk their lives every day”.

The far-right Front National and left-wing opposition groups also opposed the move as French troops continue to fight al-Qaeda-linked insurgents in Mali and remain stationed in countries including the Central African Republic, Chad and Libya.

Mr Macron restated his commitment to military intervention in Mali during his first foreign trip earlier this year, telling soldiers in the former jihadi stronghold of Gao he would be “uncompromising” in the fight against terrorism.

France is also a member of the US-led coalition bombing Isis territories in Iraq and Syria.</s>France’s top military chief resigned after a war of words with Emmanuel Macron over budget cuts that tested the new president’s authority. The row between Macron and General Pierre de Villiers erupted last week when the chief of staff told a parliamentary committee he would not allow the armed forces to be “screwed” by the government’s plans to slash 850 million euros (USD 980 million) from this year’s defence budget.

Macron, 39, slapped down the 60-year-old five-star general in front of army chiefs at their annual summer party last week, saying “I am the boss” and that he deeply regretted the budget dispute had been dragged into the “public sphere”. De Villiers, a widely respected figure who had been in the job for three years and was popular with the rank and file, said he had no choice but to stand down.

“I no longer feel able to ensure the sustainability of the model of the armed forces that I think is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people,” he said in a statement.

Yesterday, Macron stood by his handling of the disagreement, telling France 2 television that de Villiers was a “fine soldier” it was “not the role” of the chief of staff to question the budget.

The president also reiterated his promise to raise the defence budget again in 2018. “I’m behind our troops,” he assured. He named General Francois Lecointre, a 55-year-old hero of the Balkans wars, as de Villiers’s replacement.

Seen as one of the finest officers of his generation, de Villiers’s departure triggered howls of indignation from the opposition. The leader of the hard-left France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Melenchon, called it an “enormous mistake” on Macron’s part.

De Villiers’s leaked remarks about the budget were made behind closed doors to a committee that expected him to “respond frankly”, Melenchon argued. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whom Macron beat in the presidential run-off election, claimed de Villiers’s resignation showed “the very serious abuses and worrying limits” of Macron’s leadership.

Damien Abad, a lawmaker from the conservatives Republicans, also took issue with what he termed Macron’s “excessive authoritarianism”.

De Villiers had repeatedly complained that the military was overstretched and said he saw it as his duty to inform politicians. In a Facebook “letter to a young recruit” last week, he wrote: “As everyone has their shortcomings, no one should be blindly followed.”

Macron’s defence cuts — part of a 4.5-billion-euro reduction in spending aimed at reducing France’s budget deficit — were viewed by the military as a betrayal after his strong show of support for the armed forces during his first weeks in office. Hours after being inaugurated Macron visited a hospital treating injured soldiers and his maiden foreign trip as leader took him to Mali to meet French troops engaged in counter-terrorism operations.

Today, he is set to visit an air base in the southwestern city of Istres, addressing the military for the first time since de Villiers’ departure, with Lecointre accompanying him. The president, his office said, will “reiterate his support for the armed forces, reminding them of his campaign pledge to increase the defence budget as well as his ambitious plans for them in a difficult international environment”.

Retired general Dominique Trinquand, an adviser to Macron during his campaign, said the row had cast a pall over his otherwise “remarkable” debut. “This is a hitch that will probably be a bit difficult to get past,” he said in an interview with AFP.

Uniformed troops formed a guard of honour and applauded de Villiers as he left the defence ministry, according to a one-minute video posted with the message “Merci” (thank you) on the chiefs of staff Twitter account. Macron says the belt-tightening is temporary and that he remains committed to boosting defence spending to 2.0 percent of gross domestic product by 2025 (around 50 billion euros), in line with NATO targets.</s>France's military chief resigned on Wednesday after he was rebuked by President Emmanuel Macron for protesting defence spending cuts.

General Pierre de Villiers, said in a statement he no longer felt able to command the sort of armed forces "that I think is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people".

The row between the president and De Villiers, 60, blew up last week when the chief of the defence staff told a parliamentary committee he would not allow the armed forces to be "screwed" by plans to cut 850 million euros ($980 million) from the budget.

Macron replied later that "I am the boss", adding in a newspaper interview at the weekend that if there was a difference of opinion, "it is the chief of the defence staff who will change his position".

De Villiers said Wednesday that throughout his career, he had believed it was his duty to tell politicians "of my reservations".

The row has provoked a debate about whether 39-year-old Macron had humiliated his military chief or whether he had no choice but to exert his authority just two months into his presidency.

Macron, a centrist, won the presidency in May by defeating far-right rival Marine Le Pen.</s>PARIS: France 's head of the armed forces Pierre de Villiers has resigned, a statement from his office said, days after a public dispute with President Emmanuel Macron over proposed defence budget cuts.In the statement, de Villiers said he had sought to maintain a French defence force able to do an increasingly difficult job within the financial constraints imposed on it."In the current circumstances I see myself as no longer able to guarantee the robust defence force I believe is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people, today and tomorrow, and to sustain the aims of our country," he said.He said that as a result he had tendered his resignation to Macron and that it had been accepted.</s>France’s head of the armed forces resigned on Wednesday after a heated dispute with Emmanuel Macron over defence budget cuts, bringing to a head an early test of the newly elected president’s mettle.

In a statement, 60 year-old Pierre de Villiers said he had tried to maintain a French defence force with the ability to do an increasingly difficult job within the financial constraints imposed on it, but was no longer able to sustain that.

“In the current circumstances I see myself as no longer able to guarantee the robust defence force I believe is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people, today and tomorrow, and to sustain the aims of our country,” he said.

A fierce row broke out last week between the two men just two months after Macron was elected, and just as France prepared for the military pomp of a July 14 Bastille Day parade where Macron‘s US counterpart Donald Trump was the guest of honour.

De Villiers, appearing before a closed-door hearing of parliamentarians – had used strong language to protest at the 850 million euro ($979.46 million) defence budget cut Macron was making as part of his efforts to rein in state spending.

“I won’t let myself be fucked like that,” he said according to two parliamentary sources. “I may be stupid, but I know when I am being had.”

Macron had gone public with his rebuke. “I have made commitments, I am your boss,” he said in a speech to dozens of top army officers and their families.</s>The French military chief has resigned after an open conflict with President Emmanuel Macron over spending. Pierre de Villiers publicly complained about Macron’s cuts to the military’s budget, reportedly saying that he won’t be “f***ed like that.”</s>French President Emmanuel Macron (left) and Chief of the Defence Staff French Army General Pierre de Villiers at the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris July 14, 2017. — Reuters pic PARIS, July 20 — France's top military chief resigned yesterday after a war of words with Emmanuel Macron over budget cuts that tested the new president's authority.

The row between Macron and General Pierre de Villiers erupted last week when the chief of staff told a parliamentary committee he would not allow the armed forces to be "screwed" by the government's plans to slash €850 million (RM4.2 billion) from this year's defence budget.

Macron, 39, slapped down the 60-year-old five-star general in front of army chiefs at their annual summer party last week, saying “I am the boss” and that he deeply regretted the budget dispute had been dragged into the “public sphere.”

De Villiers, a widely respected figure who had been in the job for three years and was popular with the rank and file, said he had no choice but to stand down.

“I no longer feel able to ensure the sustainability of the model of the armed forces that I think is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people,” he said in a statement.

Yesterday, Macron stood by his handling of the disagreement, telling France 2 television that de Villiers was a “fine soldier” it was “not the role” of the chief of staff to question the budget.

The president also reiterated his promise to raise the defence budget again in 2018. “I'm behind our troops,” he assured.

He named General Francois Lecointre, a 55-year-old hero of the Balkans wars, as de Villiers's replacement.

Seen as one of the finest officers of his generation, de Villiers's departure triggered howls of indignation from the opposition.

The leader of the hard-left France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Melenchon, called it an “enormous mistake” on Macron's part.

De Villiers' leaked remarks about the budget were made behind closed doors to a committee that expected him to “respond frankly,” Melenchon argued.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, whom Macron beat in the presidential run-off election, claimed de Villiers' resignation showed “the very serious abuses and worrying limits” of Macron's leadership.

Damien Abad, a lawmaker from the conservatives Republicans, also took issue with what he termed Macron's “excessive authoritarianism.”

De Villiers had repeatedly complained that the military was overstretched and said he saw it as his duty to inform politicians.

In a Facebook “letter to a young recruit” last week, he wrote: “As everyone has their shortcomings, no one should be blindly followed.”

Macron's defence cuts — part of a €4.5 billion reduction in spending aimed at reducing France's budget deficit — were viewed by the military as a betrayal after his strong show of support for the armed forces during his first weeks in office.

Hours after being inaugurated Macron visited a hospital treating injured soldiers and his maiden foreign trip as leader took him to Mali to meet French troops engaged in counter-terrorism operations.

Retired general Dominique Trinquand, an adviser to Macron during his campaign, said the row had cast a pall over his otherwise "remarkable" debut.

“This is a hitch that will probably be a bit difficult to get past,” he said in an interview with AFP.

A former head of the French air force, General Vincent Lanata, told L'Express news weekly he was “very shocked” by Macron's treatment of de Villiers.

Dozens of uniformed troops formed a guard of honour and applauded de Villiers as he left the defence ministry, according to a one-minute video posted with the message "Merci" (thank you) on the chiefs of staff Twitter account.

The crisis was exacerbated by its timing, coming in the week of the July 14 Bastille Day military parade, where US President Donald Trump was the guest of honour.

During the parade, Macron rode down the Champs-Elysees avenue in an open-topped military vehicle with a grim-faced de Villiers as Trump looked on.

Macron says the belt-tightening is temporary and that he remains committed to boosting defence spending to 2.0 per cent of gross domestic product by 2025 (around €50 billion), in line with Nato targets.

Nuclear-armed France and Britain are the biggest military powers in the European Union.

French forces are currently engaged on three fronts.

French jets are taking part in strikes against Islamic State jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

Some 4,000 French soldiers are involved in efforts to stop the spread of extremism in West Africa.

And at home, 7,000 soldiers are deployed to patrol the streets after a series of terror attacks that have killed more than 230 people since 2015. — AFP</s>Armed forces chief Pierre de Villiers announced his resignation on Wednesday morning, following a row with Macron over reductions in the defence budget that led to the president to remind the armed forces "I'm your boss!".

This is the first time a chief of staff has resigned since the post was created in its present form in 1962.

"I no longer feel able to ensure the sustainability of the model of the armed forces that I think is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people," the 60-year-old general said in a resignation statement.

The government announced later that General François Lecointre, 55, who was head of military affairs in Prime Minister Edouard Phlippe's office, will replace him.

'Not going to be screwed'

The row blew up after de Villiers told a parliamentary committee that he would not be "screwed like that" when opposing a reduction of 850 million euros in the defence budget, as part of a 4.5-billion-euro nationwide cuts package.

Macron hit back at a ceremony for the military on the eve of the traditional Bastille Day parade.

"I do not consider it honourable to take certain debates into the public sphere," he told the assembly of officers and rank-and-filers.

Without referring directly to de Villiers, he reminded them that he was the "boss".

He has promised to raise defence spending to two percent of GDP by 2015, he went on, "And I do not need any pressure or comments in that respect."

The president went even further later, declaring in a newspaper interview, "If something pits the military chief of staff against the president, the chief of staff changes."

De Villiers met Macron to announce his resignation on Wednesday morning, according to sources, ahead of a general staff meeting where Admiral Philippe Coindreau stood in for him.

Macron's promise to raise defence spending's share of GDP actually originated in a proposal de Villiers made several months before the presidential election.

Claiming that the military was overstretched by the fight against terror, especially in operations such as that in Mali and the Sahel, he called for an annual budget of 42.5 billion euros by 2022.

According to the military, there is an urgent need to update equipment, especially refuelling aircraft, helicopters and armoured vehicles.

Macron started his term with a number of defence-friendly gestures - arriving for his swearing-in in a military vehicle, visiting a military hospital after it, flying to see the troops in Mali within a week and taking a ride in a nuclear submarine at the beginning of this month.

And he insists he will reach the two percent of GDP target but he appears to have faced down de Villiers, for now at least.

But, as the row headed for its climax, other officers warned that Macron could pay a political price, both inside and outside the armed forces, if soldiers are killed in action and their deaths are blamed on poor equipment.

"This is a major crisis, which will have enormous consequences," warned General Vincent Desportes, a former head of the country's top military academy, adding that the situation was "not far from" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's confrontation with the Turkish military and other state institutions.

"This resignation illustrates the very serious excesses and the very worrying limits of Monsieur Macron, as wekk as his attitude in politics," Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Front, said in a statement.

"The excess of authoritarianism of @Emmanuel Macron brings about the resignation of Chief of Staff Pierre de Villiers, bad news for our army," tweeted Damien Abad, an MP from the right-wing Republicans who sits on the parliamentary defence committee.

Even hard-left MP Alexis Corbière, who is also on the committee, declared that "the general was only doing his duty" and judged the president's repoaches to him "intolerable".</s>France's head of the armed forces has resigned days after President Emmanuel Macron publicly rebuked him in a clash over plans to slash the military’s budget by nearly a billion euros.

General Pierre de Villiers said that if the budgets cuts went through it would leave him in charge of an army “no longer able to guarantee the robust defence force I believe is necessary to guarantee the protection of France and the French people, today and tomorrow.”
Pierre de Villiers resigns as the Chief of the Defence Staff of the French Armed Forces due to disagreements with President Emmanuel Macron over proposed budget cuts.