French President Emmanuel Macron hit back at Donald Trump on Thursday after the US president mocked Macron’s relationship with his wife.
This chide came as France purportedly refused to join the US-Israeli offensive against Iran particularly restoring order and access to Strait of Hormuz.
The two leaders have touted their friendly relationship in the past, especially during Trump’s first term in office.
After days of tensions over US-Israeli strikes on Iran and over NATO, on Wednesday, April 1, Trump poked at the French president and his wife at a private lunch as he lambasted NATO allies for not joining the war against Iran.
“I called up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly, (he is) still recovering from the right to the jaw,” the US president said, apparently referencing a video from 2025 in which Brigitte Macron appeared to shove her husband in the face aboard the French presidential jet.
Pressed to respond to Trump’s comments during an official visit to South Korea on Thursday, Macron said that his US counterpart’s words “weren’t elegant, and they weren’t up to par.”
Macron’s wife, nearly 25 years his senior, has been a sensitive subject for the French president.
Last year, the couple filed a defamation lawsuit against US podcaster Candace Owens over baseless claims that Brigitte could be a man.
“So I am not going to respond to them — they do not merit a response,” Macron told reporters.
The focus instead should be on “work towards de-escalation” in the Middle East and a ceasefire, Macron said.
“There is too much talk, and it’s all over the place,” the French president said, apparently referring to numerous policy U-turns by Trump.
“We all need stability, calm, a return to peace — this isn’t a show!” Macron said.
While European allies were broadly supportive of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure last year, the scale of the current campaign and the lack of a clear strategy this time around have limited support.
France has deployed some military forces to the Persian Gulf region, sending jets and air defense systems to protect Arab allies in the gulf and deploying naval assets off the coast of Cyprus, a European Union member that has come under drone attack.
However, the French leader has refused to backstop the American campaign with naval assets to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The French offer to provide protective ships once fighting has peaked has drawn mockery from the White House.
But France has held firm, joining European allies Spain and Italy in banning the use of its airbases to US aircraft taking part in the bombing campaign.
The French and US leaders enjoyed a chummy relationship during Trump’s first term, but they have clashed over international policy over the last year.
What started as a very public battle of wills, with the two physically testing each other’s handshakes during their first meetings in Trump’s first term, has morphed into far more personal sparring. Trump has shared private messages from the French president and has regularly done impressions of the Frenchman in public.
Trump’s latest comments sparked a backlash in France, where the personal lives of politicians are granted far greater privacy than in the United States.
Leading far-left lawmaker Manuel Bompard called the US president’s comments “absolutely unacceptable,” while the centrist president of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, also criticized Trump.
“We are currently discussing the future of the world,” she said. “We see that our countrymen are extremely affected, and during this, there are people dying on the battlefield, and we have a president who is laughing, who is mocking others,” she told French radio station France Info.
Reuters
