President Trump Met Vladimir Putin For the First Time. Here’s What a Body Language Expert Saw

“If you look at that handshake, Trump does something that is different than many other handshakes I’ve seen him do with other world leaders. He’s the one that’s initiating. His body — and whole body, actually — steps forward and leans forward as he goes to shake hands. And he offers his hand . . . more palm-up, more in supplication, which again is unusual. Usually he offers it palm down to be on top. And if you look at his demeanor, he seems to be happy.”

“She offers her hand with the palm up in supplication to him and at the same time she has her head down and tilted to make eye contact with him to say, ‘Hey, we need to shake hands.’ That’s letting go of some of her power . . . he’s just standing there, and she has to make the effort to shake hands with him. And then when he shakes hands with her, it’s very brief. He’s not really in-the-moment with her. It’s just ‘O.K., this is a photo op.'”

“When you use your left hand in a handshake, typically it’s a power move, it’s a controlling move to say, ‘I surround you.’ But there are variances in that. There are slight nuances. And in this particular case, Trump puts his left hand up underneath, which is the supportive cue, up underneath Putin’s arm and taps it three times.

Now that’s going to sound odd, but three actually has a strong symbolic reference in nonverbal communication, and typically it means a true feeling or a true emotion. So you combine all those together: He’s supportive underneath Putin’s arm, he’s touching it three times in a gentle pat. It means, ‘I support you, I really support you.’

Now that is also interesting if you compare it to other handshakes where he takes that outside hand and he might grip above the elbow or grip all the way up on top of the arm or hit — have actual hitting motion — to strike the person to say, ‘I can hit you, right here. I can hit you symbolically in front of the world.’ So the tapping motion and the hitting motion are quite distinctly different.”

“Typically, Trump’s legs are slightly further apart. And that seems like a small thing, but it’s actually quite distinct because the legs’ breadth apart speaks to a feeling of power and manliness and alpha, so in this case, they’re not quite as far apart.

The other thing that’s interesting as you compare their demeanors is Trump usually does lean forward and he has shoulders slightly slouched. But in this case, I went back and compared this particular meeting with other meetings, and his slouch is a little bit more pronounced.”