Sitting in the élysée Palace, the 303-year-old seat of the French presidency and a jewel of European neoclassical architecture, Steve Witkoff was struck by its resemblance to another famous pile, on the other side of the Atlantic.
“You know what this looks like? It actually looks like President Trump’s club at Mar-a-Lago,” the billionaire property investor said. “He actually works on it himself. He’s like an architect or a designer.”
The remark provoked barely restrained laughter from the other diplomats round the table. But it also revealed the deep affinity between Witkoff and Trump, two men who came of age in the white-knuckle world of New York real estate and have been friends for decades.