A Global Trump Movement? France Election Signals No
The combination of a seasoned, dominant figure like Ms. Merkel and a young, dynamic newcomer like Mr. Macron, he said, creates an "implicit challenge and perhaps an explicit challenge to the Trump ideology." Mr. Trump called Mr. Macron on Monday to congratulate him,
but the first real test of their relationship could come in just two weeks when Mr. Trump makes his first trip to Europe as president to attend a NATO summit meeting in Brussels and a Group of 7 summit meeting in Sicily.
Despite the rise of nationalist parties and Britain’s vote last year to leave the European Union, the victory of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron over the far-right insurgent Marine Le Pen represented the third time since Mr. Trump’s election
that voters in Europe have essentially rejected his fiery brand of politics.
Trump said that It changes the landscape in which Trump’s foreign policy will operate.
Rather than finding a series of like-minded figures in power across the Atlantic, Mr. Trump now finds himself facing a European tandem in Mr. Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany
that strongly supports the European Union and will take a harder line on President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.
By PETER BAKERMAY 8, 2017
WASHINGTON — To the extent that President Trump or his strategists saw his against-the-odds election last year as the leading edge
of an international movement, the presidential vote in France over the weekend signaled that Europe was not ready to enlist.
Mr. Macron, by contrast, aired an advertisement showing American pundits last year predicting a decisive election defeat
for Mr. Trump to persuade his own supporters not to take victory for granted in Sunday’s second-round runoff.
