Tree Dead, Long Live Tree

Tree dead. Tree…live.

A tree planted by President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron on the White House lawn last year has died. But from its ashes rises a newer, healthier tree, with which Macron is replacing the formerly sad, sick oak, its death suffered alone, in quarantine.

According to Reuters, Macron wrote off the very obvious metaphor that the tree’s death represents, promising to send Trump another three. From Reuters:

“We will send him another, it is not a tragedy,” Macron told Switzerland’s RTS network on the sidelines of an International Labour Organisation meeting in Geneva. “Do not see symbols where there are none, the symbol was to plant it together”.

[…]

“It turns out that this oak was put in quarantine for American sanitary reasons and the poor thing did not survive,” Macron said. “I’ll send another oak because I think the U.S. Marines and the friendship for freedom between our peoples is well worth it.”

Goodbye, dead tree. Hello, living tree. This is also not a metaphor.