Here is Newt Gingrich on French President Macron’s visit with President Trump:
It makes perfect sense for President Donald Trump to honor President Emmanuel Macron of France for his administration’s first official State Visit.
Both presidents are committed to dramatic change in their own countries. Both are businessmen and value the free market as a source of innovation, progress and wealth. Both are committed to defeating Islamist terrorists, and they have recently proven how strong their alliance is with the allied attack in Syria.
President Macron was very impressive in his interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace last weekend. If you take a few minutes to watch or read his clear, thoughtful answers to Chris, you will better understand how he became the President of France.
Macron is smart and charismatic. He is self-confident, having been successful in business, government, and politics. He also has a clear sense of how France needs to change if it is to be competitive in the modern world.
In a sense, Trump and Macron are both trying to drain their respective country’s swamp.
The American swamp is more bureaucratic, whereas the French swamp is more labor union-centered, but both are hostile to popular reforms and destructive to economic growth and allowing the average person to have freedom of action.
That President Trump would find his favored foreign leader in Paris may come as a surprise to many Americans. Yet, a strong American alliance with France is historically appropriate.
As President Trump pointed out during the State Arrival Ceremony on Tuesday, France is “our oldest ally and … truly one of our great allies.” Macron also acknowledged that the bonds shared by our countries “are based upon our deep attachment to freedom and peace.”
As President Macron noted in his address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday morning, there are only two portraits hanging in the House Chamber in the Capitol building. One is of President George Washington, the father of our country. The other is of French General Marquis de Lafayette.
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Image credit: The White House.
