Will Macron visit to White House bring transatlantic relationship 'back from the brink'?

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00:00as well to Ketavan Ghodistani, our International Affairs Editor and former

00:03Washington correspondent, of course, as well. Ketavan, what do you see as the

00:06positives of the meeting? Well look, Emmanuel Macron's goal, a meeting with

00:12Donald Trump, was sort of to salvage what is left of the transatlantic

00:17relationships after days of attacks, of insults even, from the United States

00:22towards the Europeans, towards the Ukrainians. It seems that he managed to

00:27at least bring that relationship back from the brink. Now the bar is pretty low

00:31given what has happened in the past couple of weeks, but the tone has

00:36changed a little bit and Dave was mentioning some of these elements. Now

00:42yes, Donald Trump did not agree to have that U.S. backstop, for example, that the

00:47Europeans have been asking for, but unlike past comments from some of the U.S.

00:54administration, he did not explicitly shut it down and he said he welcomed the

01:00fact that the Europeans were stepping up. The same thing goes with what he said

01:05about Putin's being supposedly on board with having those troops there. You also

01:12saw that he responded to a question by our reporter Sonia Dridi who asked him

01:19are you willing to meet with Zelensky and he said yes, so we're gonna meet

01:23maybe at the end of the week, maybe next week. This is a pretty big departure from

01:28his rant on Truth Social calling Zelensky a mediocre actor and a dictator.

01:35So it seems that the tone has lightened up a little bit when it comes to Donald

01:41Trump and part of that is Emmanuel Macron using his relationship with

01:46Donald Trump. Much has been said of their past relationship. Remember Emmanuel

01:50Macron was already president during Donald Trump's first term, so they have

01:54had ups and downs, but they do have a special relationship and you saw that in

01:58the Oval Office, especially those handshakes, those laughs, those, you know,

02:04the sort of relationship between the two men and I think that allows

02:09Emmanuel Macron to sort of push back sometimes. He sort of balances it out. He

02:15praised Donald Trump for the fact that he got the ball moving, if you will, by

02:20speaking to Vladimir Putin. He praised Donald Trump for his deal-making

02:25abilities. He praised Donald Trump for using power for diplomacy, but he also

02:31pushed back on certain elements. He repeated multiple times that Russia was

02:36the aggressor, that Russia was supposed to pay reparations. He also pushed back

02:40and that was, I think, one of the big moments of that Oval Office meeting when

02:45Donald Trump was saying once again that Europe wasn't paying enough for

02:50supporting Ukraine and Emmanuel Macron interrupted him, put his hand on his arm

02:54and said, actually, no, and he sort of said, let's get the facts straight here.

03:00Europe is actually contributing technically more than the United States.

03:06Not many leaders have been able to do that and the reaction on social media

03:10from the US media, from a lot of Democrats, was sort of, wow, Emmanuel

03:16Macron fact-checking live Donald Trump in the Oval Office was sort of the

03:21reaction. But I think all of this is pretty good, but it could, as Dave said,

03:28be just words and it could also as quickly turn the other way with

03:33possibly a next call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and this could

03:38all change in the blink of an eye if things don't go Donald Trump's way and I

03:43think one of the key elements there to look for is whether there will be that

03:46agreement on the rare earths in Ukraine with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

03:51And on all the bed of roses, is it?

03:54No, absolutely not and I think one of the things missing from this meeting were

03:59sort of concrete steps forward. It looks encouraging, but so far Donald Trump

04:05hasn't changed on some of his main positions. As I said, he repeated multiple

04:09times that Europe wasn't doing enough to support Ukraine. He was asked whether he

04:14would use the same word he used for Vladimir Zelensky, dictator, to speak

04:18about Vladimir Putin and to that he said, I do not use those words lightly and

04:24refused to answer the question. He also didn't give any clear position from the

04:30United States on that security guarantee on what the Europeans are asking for.

04:35He's also, more importantly, still refusing to blame Russia for the

04:39invasion of Ukraine and we saw this meeting happening at the same time in

04:44New York at the time were those resolutions. One at the General

04:49Assembly, one in the UN Security Council, where the US joined the Russians to vote

04:56once yes, once no, but opposed to the rest of the European alliance. And that G7

05:02meeting that happened before Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron met, that G7

05:06meeting still doesn't have a statement, supposedly because the Americans are

05:11refusing to call Russia the aggressor. So still a lot to move forward there.

05:18And a lot could still go very wrong and this, of course, having consequences for the Ukrainians.

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