President Trump raised a glass to toast his warm relationship with French leader Emmanuel Macron during the first state dinner of his administration on Tuesday, capping off a two-day summit that touched on Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, and trade tensions with the European Union.
“Tonight we celebrate nearly two-and-a-half centuries of friendship between the United States and France,” Trump told guests in the White House State Dining Room, after thanking his wife for planning the private soiree.
“May our friendship grow even deeper, may our kinship grow even stronger, and may our scared liberties never die,” the president added.
More than 120 guests were invited to attend the state dinner on Tuesday, ranging from Olympic athletes, senior White House officials, and members of the president’s Cabinet to decorated veterans, bipartisan lawmakers, and media moguls.
Several of the guests, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, have become regular advisers to the president, often meeting with Trump in the Oval Office or chatting with him by phone after he’s retired to the White House residence for the evening.
[Here are the guests attending Trump’s first state dinner]
The overall guest count was unusually small compared to previous administrations, whose state dinners often featured between 200 to 350 guests.
According to details of the dinner released Tuesday, guests were expected to dine on spring lamb, Carolina jambalaya, and the creme fraiche ice cream, a French dish, for dessert. The menu also featured wines from Oregon’s Willamette Valley region.
The visit by Macron, with whom Trump has developed a warm rapport, came just weeks before the administration is expected to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, a pact supported by the French leader and other European allies of the U.S.
Following a series of bilateral talks earlier Tuesday, Trump said he may be open to reaching an agreement with France and other parties to the deal that would preserve it while pursuing some modifications. Doing so would prevent Iran from resuming its nuclear weapons program in the absence of an agreement, something Tehran has promised to do if the U.S. walks away from the agreement.
“They’re not going to be restarting anything,” Trump confidently declared Tuesday afternoon. “They restart it, they’re going to have big problems, bigger than they’ve ever had before.”
Macron and his wife are expected to return to France on Wednesday, two days before Trump is set to host German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the second time since taking office.
