Emmanuel Macron was warned!

To be more specific, the newly elected president of France was told to be prepared for the sometimes awkward and always aggressive handshakes of President Trump. And it happened after Gérard Araud hosted a salon dinner Monday at the spectacular Washington, D.C., home he lives in as the French ambassador to the United States.

I was among the journalists, politicians, philanthropists and think tankers who gathered at the Kalorama neighborhood manse to participate in a conversation co-hosted by the Atlantic on the rise of populism in Western liberal democracies. A friend and I were talking during the pre-dinner cocktail hour about our summer plans when the affable and impish Araud approached.

As with all conversations in this town for the last 126 days (as of this writing), ours turned to Trump. The ambassador, whose previous post was as France’s ambassador to the United Nations, allowed that he had just sent a memo to Macron advising him on how to handle the American president during their first meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels on Thursday.