London: US President Donald Trump has sparked a furore by mocking French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte during a speech about the war with Iran, adding a new personal barb to his deepening dispute with European allies.
Trump joked that Brigitte Macron treated her husband “extremely badly” and the French leader was still recovering from a “right to the jaw” from his wife, drawing laughs from the audience at a White House lunch.
The remarks infuriated French politicians including Macron’s biggest rivals, with left-wing leader Manuel Bompard declaring it was “absolutely unacceptable” for Trump to speak of Brigitte Macron in this way.
Macron scorned the remarks as “neither elegant nor up to standard” and said they did not deserve a reply, before launching into a critique of the US president for going to war without NATO allies and later asking them to come to his aid.
While apparently petty, Trump’s remarks add to tensions between the US and its allies over the Middle East when European leaders are refusing to join the war and some are suggesting that American policy is a victory for Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Trump was speaking at an Easter function at the White House on Wednesday, local time, when he described a phone call he made to Macron to seek French support for the war.
“And I call up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly,” he said, as the audience laughed. “Still recovering from the right to the jaw,” he added.
“And I said: ‘Emmanuel, we’d love to have some help in the Gulf, even though we’re setting records and knocking out bad people and knocking out ballistic missiles. We’d love to have some help. If you could, could you please send ships immediately?’”
Trump said Macron replied: “No, no, no, we cannot do that, Donald. We can do that after the war is won.”
Trump continued: “I said: ‘No, no, I don’t need after the war is won, Emmanuel’. Many of them said ‘we’ll be there after the war is completed’.”
The remark about Brigitte Macron apparently refers to a video that went viral on social media in May last year showing her shoving her husband in the face moments before he descended the stairs of the presidential aircraft upon arrival in Vietnam.
Macron later described the moment as one of “squabbling” and “joking” with his wife and made light of the sense of “catastrophe” about it in the media.
The White House belatedly realised the offence Trump caused with his joke and removed a video of his remarks after initially posting it to its official website.
In a sign of Trump’s sour view of Macron in light of the war in Iran, the US president also remarked on the Vietnam incident in May last year, but with a very different tone: “He’s fine, they’re fine. Two really good people I know very well,” he said.
Macron responded to Trump on Thursday upon arrival in South Korea after an official visit to Japan, but he focused his comments on the war and the lack of consultation between the White House and NATO allies.
In a sharp jab at Trump’s presidential style, Macron called for less “chatter” about the war and a more “serious” approach.
“When you want to be serious, you don’t say, every day, the opposite of what you said the day before,” he said.
The French president’s rebuke came one day after Trump’s spoke of bombing Iran “back to the Stone Ages [sic]” – a remark at odds with his claim one month ago that the war could help bring freedom to the Iranian people.
“This is not a show,” Macron said. “We are talking about war and peace and the lives of men and women.”
In a key European criticism of Trump’s approach, Macron said the airstrikes by the US and Israel were “decided on by themselves” and not the subject of consultation.
“They then lament that they are alone in an operation they decided on alone. It’s not our operation,” he said.
Trump has also disparaged British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, saying he was “no Winston Churchill” because he would not back the US in the war, and threatened to impose tariffs on Spain because Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would not allow the US to use airbases in that country for the war.
Trump has a major ally in Europe, however, in Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who wants to open up more Russian oil imports, has good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has sought to block the European Union from giving more financial help to Ukraine.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk aired his concern about the impact of US policy without naming the US president in a social media post on Thursday.
“The threat of NATO’s break-up, easing sanctions on Russia, a massive energy crisis in Europe, halting aid for Ukraine and blocking the loan for Kyiv by Orbán – it all looks like Putin’s dream plan,” said Tusk.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.