Emmanuel Macron's allies have asked him to keep quiet. But the French president wants to talk. On Tuesday, June 18, at the Petit Victor Hugo brasserie in Paris's 16th arrondissement, Macron had a few things to say to reporters. In front of a dozen or so journalists from the regional press, the president castigated the "spirit of defeat" that has paralyzed his camp. His decision to dissolve the Assemblée Nationale 10 days earlier on June 9 left a bitter taste in the mouths of his coalition's MPs, who fear facing electoral failures. A wave of far-right extremism is sweeping the country, and Macron's decision to call early elections was meant to fight "this rising tide" and not to freeze in "contemplation of disaster," he said.
Over tartare and French fries, however, Macron preferred to target the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, uniting La France Insoumise party with the Socialists, Greens, and Communists. "On the societal question, look at their manifesto, they're proposing that you can change your sex at the town hall!" he said, as reported in the newspaper Sud Ouest on Wednesday, June 19. "It's in their project. That's one vision of society, it's not mine," he continued, before later flying off the same day for the island of Sein, in Brittany. While in the northwestern region, Macron doubled down on the subject of a sex change at the town hall, telling a retired couple it was a "grotesque" idea, before accusing the Nouveau Front Populaire of defending an "immigrationist policy," using terms borrowed from the far right.
"Macron has chosen his camp. For him, national authoritarianism is better than the Front Populaire," wrote François Ruffin on X, an incumbent La France Insoumise MP. "We were waiting for Jupiter, we got Nero," said Socialist leader Olivier Faure, on RTL radio – Macron, before becoming president in 2017, had said France needed a "Jupiterian" presidency.
"Through his remarks, we see the image Emmanuel Macron has of the French people: franchouillard [a perojative way of describing the average French person and their faults] and homophobic," said Gaspard Gantzer, a former press relations advisor to Macron's Socialist, predecessor, François Hollande.
The Elysée tried to limit the damage. Marlène Schiappa, former junior minister for equality between men and women, was rushed to the set of BFM-TV on Wednesday, June 19, to defend the president and his progressive track record, such as the expansion of medically assisted reproduction to all women. "We have misunderstood him," she said, the comment "was taken out of context."
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