Trump’s awkward ‘death clasp’ handshake with Macron goes viral

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have again grabbed hands in such a way that the encounter has gone viral. 

Macron was visiting Trump at the White House Monday, Macron’s first official visit back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. during the president’s second term. 

Trump waited outside the West Wing and greeted Macron with a handshake and then the two leaders went in for a hug. 

After that the handshake continued – a tug-of-war of sorts – before Trump and Macron were asked by a reporter to send well-wishes to the Pope.

Body language expert Judi James referred to it as a ‘death clasp.’ 

‘With the eyes and the fate of the world currently resting on their shoulders,’ James told DailyMail.com, ‘this latest handshake greeting was always going to be riddled with signals of superior power and dominance.’ 

Monday’s grab-and-grin is the latest in a long line of elongated handshakes between the two leaders, which started eight years before.

During a May 2017 meeting ahead of the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump and Macron gripped hands so tightly that their knuckles turned white and their jaws clenched. 

Macron said at the time that the clinch of a handshake was ‘not innocent’ and meant to be a ‘moment of truth’ showing his U.S. counterpart that the French leader would not be intimidated. 

They shared several more bizarre handshakes during Trump’s first term, which ended in January 2021. 

In December 2024, after Trump won reelection over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, he and Macron were reunited in Paris for the reopening of the Notre Dame, which had been severely damaged in a April 2019 fire. 

Trump and Macron were back at it with the intense handshakes during the trip.  

James reminded DailyMail.com that it was Macron who ‘initially won the battle of the power shakes with Trump the first time around when they had one of their earliest meetings during Trump’s first term in office.’ 

‘Trump was a serial power-shaker who loved to register alpha, physical domination via his impressive back-catalog of alarming bone-crushers and patting rituals. But Macron had obviously been prepping with maybe a little weight training because he gripped Trump’s hand so hard you could see the outline of his fingers in the flesh of Trump’s hand for several moments after,’ James recalled. 

She then turned her attention to Monday’s display noting that the leaders’ ‘rictus grins being performed shouldn’t divert from the real action going on at waist height’ as both Trump and Macron ‘wanted to register superiority here.’ 

‘Trump’s power-pat on Macron’s shoulder is a control and pinning gesture that also hints at a parental-style dominance,’ James said. ‘Macron responds at once with a hand-clamp on Trump’s bicep, suggesting he is not intimidated by the President’s alpha posturing.’

‘The two men then lock hands in a “death clasp” muscular clamping of the hands,’ James noted. 

‘Macron slaps his left hand over the clasp to suggest control and then performs a Trump classic, the “Shake and Yank,” where the clasp is suddenly and relatively violently yanked either forward or backward, de-stabilizing your “opponent” by taking them off-balance,’ James observed. 

In this instance, Macron yanked backward, with Trump leaning forward, so Macron can re-position his hand on top. 

‘As the two men turn to face the cameras Trump keeps a grim grip on Macron’s hand, forcing the shake to last for several seconds and several extra shakes longer,’ James noted. ‘We can see how this firm clasp is more like a tussle than a gesture of mutual respect.’ 

James also noted that the next foreign leader to meet Trump needed to ‘study the footage in detail.’

Trump will host British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the White House on Thursday. 

‘Trump appears to be back in power-play body language mode again and Starmer has so far shown nothing like the level of Macron’s skills when it comes to dealing with it,’ James warned.