In what was a friendly exchange between two men, who met earlier in the day, is being turned into something completely ridiculous. If you are to believe the press, President Trump "pushed" or "shoved" the Prime Minister of Montenegro Dusko Markovic. Markovic himself told the Washington Post, "It was an inoffensive situation... I do not see it any other way. I had the opportunity today to thank President Trump personally for his support, speed ratification of the Accession Protocol in the U.S. Senate, the overall support for Montenegro’s Euro-Atlantic integration and of course the further development of our bilateral relations."
As one can clearly see from the video, President Trump approached Markovic from behind, and patted him sternly on the right arm as if to say, hey buddy. A split second later, as you can see in the picture below, Markovic is smiling, as is Trump.
Trump's left side of his torso is pressed up against Markovic and the latter has his right arm on Trump's lower back as you can see if you look closely at the next photo:
In addition to claiming Trump shoved a nation's Prime Minister, the media also claimed it was for the purpose of getting into a better position for a photo op. The problem with that is, as Sean Spicer pointed out, those spots are already predetermined, so they're would be no reason to push anybody aside.
Few and far between, there were some words of clarity to be found once you sift through all the typical noise:
As Dan Calabrese wrote in the Canada Free Press: “Look, I understand there’s a frenzy out there now to alert on anything and everything Trump does and to characterize it as insane, out-of-control, evil and whatever else. But if you see this and think you see a ‘shove,’ I don’t know what to tell you.”
Sources:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/05/26/trumps-shove-was-inoffensive-montenegro-prime-minister-says/102184518/
http://www.salon.com/2017/05/26/montenegros-prime-minister-didnt-mind-president-trumps-shove-seen-round-the-world/
& glancing at the first two pages of Google search results.
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