French President Emmanuel Macron hit back at Donald Trump on Thursday after the U.S. president mocked Macron’s relationship with his wife as he chided France for refusing to join the U.S.-Israeli offensive against Iran.
The two leaders have touted their friendly relationship in the past, especially during Trump’s first term in office. But at a private event Wednesday, Trump lambasted the French leader for not coming to America’s aid in the Middle East.
“I called up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly, (he is) still recovering from the right to the jaw,” the U.S. 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 U.S. counterpart’s words “weren’t elegant, and they weren’t up to par.”
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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 U.S. podcaster Candace Owens over baseless claims that Brigitte could be a man.
While European allies were broadly supportive of the U.S.-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 defence 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.
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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 U.S. aircraft taking part in the bombing campaign.
The French and U.S. 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.
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As for Macron, he appeared visibly annoyed at having to respond to Trump’s comments on his wife Thursday, and he has grown accustomed to sharing sometimes stern rebukes of White House policy — and tariffs — during Trump’s second term.
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 U.S. 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.
