Speaking about the “disastrous” Paris Agreement on climate change during a Republican campaign rally in Muskegon, Michigan, US President Donald Trump apparently downgraded office position of his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, referring to him as “prime minister”.
The gaffe was made while Trump was slamming the NAFTA trade agreement, which Biden had supported. Trump called it “the worst trade deal ever made”, and slammed the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty, from which the US withdrew in 2017, after Trump was elected as the US president.
"And you know what else I stopped? The Paris environmental accord”, Trump boasted to the crowd of supporters.
"And I like Prime Minister Macron a lot. But I said 'how's it going over there? How is the accord doing?' They're not doing too good”, he continued, while insisting that this move had saved the US “trillions of dollars”.
France, as a semi-presidential system, indeed has a prime minister, Jean Castex, the head of the French government, who was appointed in July of this year. For his part, Emmanuel Macron is the president of France, making him the head of state; in some countries, like India, which also has a president and a prime minister, the role of the former is mostly ceremonial.
Trump’s mistake could be just accidental, bearing in mind a number of slips of tongue he had made in the past, however, some may remember revelations made in John Bolton’s bombshell biography where he admitted that the US president “didn’t really like either Trudeau or Macron” but rather “tolerated” them. According to Bolton, Trump even had once accused the French president, to his face, of “always leaking their conversations”, something that was apparently denied by a “smiling” Macron.
Just a few days ago, Trump went as far during his North Carolina rally as to compare himself to Jesus Christ, while admitting that he was still not as famous as the Christian messiah.