
“I’d rather swallow acid,” his Defense Secretary, James Mattis, said. The generals, to his bewilderment, reacted with disgust. Sure enough, Trump returned to Washington determined to have his generals throw him the biggest, grandest military parade ever for the Fourth of July. The French general in charge of the parade turned to one of his American counterparts and said, “You are going to be doing this next year.” The event seemed to be calculated to appeal to Trump-his sense of showmanship and grandiosity-and he was visibly delighted. Vintage tanks rolled down the Champs-Élysées as fighter jets roared overhead. Macron staged a spectacular martial display to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the American entrance into the First World War.

In the summer of 2017, after just half a year in the White House, Donald Trump flew to Paris for Bastille Day celebrations thrown by Emmanuel Macron, the new French President.
