UPDATE: The French Army has denied the tweet was aimed at Donald Trump.
The French Army appears to have had a sly dig at Donald Trump after he cancelled a trip to honour US soldiers killed in the First World War because of the rain.
A tweet sent by the Armée de Terre on Monday morning showed the country’s soldiers getting training despite some inclement weather conditions.
The caption read: ”#MondayMotivation. There’s rain but it’s not serious. We’re staying motivated.”
Of course it could just be a coincidence but the emojis suggest not.
On Tuesday the Twitter account tweeted a clarification claiming it showed “just the usual activity of the military”.
In a statement to HuffPost France, the army said: “It was just raining in Paris that day and we tweeted this picture as we sometimes do with other images of our soldiers on Monday using the hashtag #MondayMotivation.
“We are military, so our position is to have a duty of reserve. American journalists think what they want.”
The President and First Lady were due to fly by helicopter to visit to the Ainse-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial in France on Saturday as part of events marking 100 years since Armistice Day.
Also known as the Belleau Wood cemetery, the site is home to the graves of 2,289 American war dead and 1,060 names of the missing.
Most died in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in 1918. It was the largest US military offensive in history involving 1.2 million men. More than 26,000 were killed.
The visit was called off at the last minute due to weather, the White House said at the time.
But after many people, including Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said the President must have had a contingency plan for bad weather, the White House on Sunday night said Trump did not want to disrupt Paris roads with a last-minute motorcade.
The White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said: “President Trump did not want to cause that kind of unexpected disruption to the city and its people.”
Trump has caused regular traffic disruption when he travels to his Mar-a-Lago resort to play golf. He has also been known to play golf in the rain.