WASHINGTON — President Trump rarely says he needs his hand held for anything. Unless he’s around President Emmanuel Macron of France.

“He’s a great guy — smart, strong, loves holding my hand,” Mr. Trump joked about his French counterpart in an Oval Office interview with The New York Times on Wednesday.

“People don’t realize, he loves holding my hand — that’s good!” the president said of Mr. Macron, who invited Mr. Trump to attend Bastille Day festivities in Paris last week.

The budding warmth in their relationship follows an initially awkward first encounter at a NATO meeting in Brussels in May, during which Mr. Macron firmly shook Mr. Trump’s hand to signal that he would not be intimidated. In the weeks after, Mr. Trump said he intended to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, a move he anticipated would frustrate Mr. Macron.