French President Emmanuel Macron will be invited to the White House for a state visit in late April, it has been reported.
The trip will see Macron become the first world leader to be granted the honor of a full state visit under the Trump administration.
It comes after Trump struck up an unlikely friendship with Macron last year as he attended Bastille Day celebrations in Paris.
Emmanuel Macron will be granted a state visit to the White House in late April this year, sources say (pictured, the two Presidents watch the Bastille Day parade in Paris last year)
Macron and Trump struck up an unlikely bromance during the Bastille Day parade, with Trump reportedly so impressed he is now planning his own version in America
AfP first reported the date of the visit, attributing it to ‘diplomatic sources’.
White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the administration’s intentions to extend the invite to Macron back in January.
No formal announcement or official date has yet been released.
Trump first met Macron on the sidelines of a NATO summit in May last year after the President arrived for a tour of Europe, in which he admonished leaders for failing to keep up their spending commitments to the military alliance.
The two have met several times since then, but the defining moment of their ‘bromance’ came during a 24-hour visit to Paris in July 2017.
There, Trump sat alongside the French President and their wives to watch the annual Bastille Day military parade, which marks the storming of the Bastille and the start of the French Revolution.
The date also coincided with 100th anniversary of the entry of US troops into the First World War, with American personnel featuring in the display.
Macron will become the first world leader granted the privilege of a full state visit if the proposed trip goes ahead
British Prime Minister Theresa May was the first world leader to visit Washington after Trump was elected, but was not given state honors
Trump, who has a well-known penchant for military parades, seemed enthralled and the pair shared a long handshake and embrace.
In fact, the President was so thrilled with the display he has now ordered military chiefs to look into doing a similar annual display in America.
General Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed the news on Wednesday, saying he was ‘looking into it’.
Most recently Macron invited Trump to the World Economic Forum in Davos, an invite he accepted – becoming the first President since Clinton to do so.
Things had not always looked so promising for a friendship between America and its oldest ally after Trump openly backed Macron’s presidential opponent, nationalist Marine Le Pen, during the French election.
Macron’s globalist, internationalist, and liberal outlook did little to encourage expectations of a budding bromance.
But, as Macron told the BBC on Sunday, the pair now have ‘a very strong relationship’ and talk ‘very regularly.’
‘I’m always extremely direct and frank. He is. Sometimes I manage to convince him, and sometimes I fail,’ he added.