Donald Trump and handshakes

The handshakes of Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States, with world leaders have been the subject of extensive commentary. Scholars have noted that politicians' handshakes are usually unnoticed or restricted to silent interpretation by the participants, and only in the case of Trump do they appear to receive widespread media attention.

Notable incidents of handshakes (and avoidance of handshakes) have included interactions with French president Emmanuel Macron, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, German chancellor Angela Merkel, and U.S. leaders including FBI director James Comey and Supreme Court justice nominee Neil Gorsuch. The same characteristic or mannerism was identified during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, although it was not widely reported on at the time. The Washington Post reported that "Trump has a habit of sharing awkward, intense and sometimes downright strange handshakes with world leaders", who prepare themselves to counteract the handshake from Trump.

The Guardian said Trump's handshake style is a way to assert his superiority, and the New Statesman called it a show of masculinity. Psychology professor Florin Dolcos finds it to be a part of Trump's strategic way of interacting with world leaders. Commentators claim that Trump has germophobic views relating to handshaking; at times, he has deemed handshaking to be "barbaric, disgusting and very, very terrible". Trump's approach to handshaking became even more a subject of debate during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he predicted that the social convention might come to an end, but as a politician he would continue shaking hands due to its "deep-seated symbolic meaning".

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