Today in Paris

Since his arrival late Friday night, Trump’s every action seemed emblematic of the unilateralism he has made the hallmark of his administration. And the whiplash he tends to inflict on his hosts. First,Trump tweeted a direct attack on Macron, who has been calling for Europe to step up its own defense. The two men acted as if they had made up Saturday morning when they appeared—both manspreading in their chairs with forced smiles—making brief remarks at the Elysée Palace before a bilateral meeting. Trump said he wanted a strong Europe. But it was clear the romance was over.

Then came the news that Trump would skip a central event of his 48-hour trip: a visit to the Aisne-American Cemetery and Memorial outside Paris, where he had been expected to honor American soldiers who had died in the World War I. The White House said inclement weather prevented his helicopter from flying. But the site is an hour’s drive outside Paris, and the weather wasn’t that bad. What was Trump doing instead? Whom was he meeting with? No details have yet emerged.

  The Atlantic

Forgot one point: that helicopter has been pictured in various Obama presidency shots having flown him to various places in the rain. That helicopter was NOT grounded because of the weather.

The vanishing act was classic Trump—dominating the news cycle, insulting and upstaging his hosts, to say nothing of U.S. soldiers and veterans. [...] [H]ere in Europe, Trump’s political theater underscored exactly what Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders are increasingly concerned about: Europe is being isolated, if not hung out to dry, by the United States.

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French commentators noted that Trump was also shunning the Paris Peace Forum, a kind of Davos for multilateralism that opens on Sunday, inaugurated by Macron, Merkel and the secretary general of the United Nations.

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French television commentators called it “symbolic” that the U.S. president shunned the group [arriving solo to Sunday morning's commemorative ceremony], and also noted, as Trump stiffly took his place next to Merkel, that “he didn’t look very smiley.” He was more smiley when Putin arrived.

The Russian president gave Trump a thumbs up and a brief friendly pat on the arm.

In a somber speech beneath the Arc de Triomphe, Macron recalled how with World War I, Europe almost committed suicide. He said “old demons” were resurfacing and history was threatening to repeat itself, and threatening Europe’s history of peace. He decried “the selfishness of countries that regard only their own interests,” which sounded like a remark clearly aimed at the United States. “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” he said. “Nationalism is its betrayal. In saying ‘Our interests first and others don’t matter,’ we erase what is most precious to a nation, what makes it live, what makes it great, what is most important: its moral values.” It was impossible not to hear Macron’s words, before so many other world leaders, as aimed at Trump, a sign of how the rest of the world is contending with the repercussions of “America First.”

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Macron called on nations to work together to fight climate change, poverty, hunger, sickness and inequality.

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This was very much Macron’s show. A way of positioning himself on the world stage as a uniter of Europe, a force against populism, ahead of elections for the European Parliament in May. It was also a chance for Macron to shore up the post-war Franco-German alliance. On Saturday, while Trump stayed in Paris doing whatever he was doing, Macron and Merkel went to Compèigne, a site outside Paris freighted with 20th-century history. It is the site where Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of the western front, signed the ceasefire agreement with Germany, ending World War I, and where Adolph Hitler forced France to sign a capitulation agreement in 1940.