‘Handshakes with Donalds are usually quite a challenge’

That’s a quip by Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, expressed while sharing a video of himself, shaking hands with France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, in a way that poked fun at Donald Trump. 

For those who need more context, here’s how the Indy100 website reported it:

It’s just one of the many things about the Republican and US president-elect which irritates other world leaders, and now, French president Emmanuel Macron and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk have poked fun at Donald Trump’s rather assertive way of shaking someone’s hand.

The convicted felon, who puts the ‘yank’ in Yankee, has long made headlines for his way of greeting fellow politicians, which involves a sharp tug on the other person’s hand which psychologists and body language experts have described as a “tactical move” and a “bone-crusher handshake”.

One martial arts academy even taught people how to defend themselves against such a handshake.

And Macron has seen it as somewhat of a challenge over the years, as back in 2018 he decided to disarm (ha) the Potus by going for a traditional French double kiss instead – and the duo had another intense greeting last week.

Now, Macron has taken another dig at Trump’s unusual greeting style during a meeting with Tusk on Thursday, when the former was in Warsaw to discuss the ongoing war in Ukraine and recent conversations with the country’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump.

Sharing a video of the pair shaking hands, before engaging in a much tighter grip, Tusk wrote on Twitter: “Handshakes with Donalds are usually quite a challenge.”

The Polish PM was also seen giving Macron a playful jab as the duo laughed at their little joke.