On Tuesday’s episode of Man, We’re Really Going to Spend Time Talking about This, Aren’t We, New York representative Eliot Engel announced that he will not position himself along the receiving aisle to shake the president’s hand as he enters the House chamber Tuesday night for a speech to Congress. It will mark the first time in 29 years Engel has not followed his personal custom, during which time Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed disdain for handshakes, anyway.
In The Art of the Comeback, published in 1997, he called the practice a cultural liability.
“One of the curses of American society is the simple act of shaking hands, and the more successful and famous one becomes the worse this terrible custom seems to get,” he wrote. “I happen to be a clean hands freak. I feel much better after I thoroughly wash my hands, which I do as much as possible.” If only we could get Purel to sponsor joint sessions of Congress.
“I’m not a big fan of the handshake,” Trump told Dateline NBC in October 1999, during which time he was mulling a presidential run. Here’s one of his vintage extemporaneous riffs with interviewer Stone Phillips:
A month later, Trump was admiring President Clinton for exposing himself to folksiness.
“Clinton was shaking hands with 500 or 600 people, he then got into the back of the presidential limo, grabs a sandwich, and he eats it, and no problem. I wish I could be like that. I just can’t,” he said on Geraldo Rivera’s CNBC program.
Interest in Trump’s hands would not pick up again until he actually decided to run for the White House 16 years later.
Since becoming commander in chief, he has embraced the handshake—Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe might say he’s been “crushing it“. But following through with a time-honored diplomatic gesture is different than loving it. True, the president has kept an open mind about some issues in the past. It’s tough to believe, though, he’d pull a volte face on a matter of hygiene.
In Engel’s case, then, Trump would probably appreciate his fellow members of Congress following his lead. And here we thought Democrats weren’t in the business of handing the president a win.
(For the record, for yesterday’s episode of Man, We’re Really Going to Spend Time Talking about This, Aren’t We, click here.)
