Macron Rebukes Trump for Public Dig at His Wife and Marriage: ‘Doesn’t Deserve an Answer’

(Screengrab via X)

French President Emmanuel Macron rebuked President Donald Trump’s swipe at his wife and their marriage Thursday, after a video of Trump’s dig made one day earlier at a private White House lunch was briefly posted online.

Trump’s remarks came on Wednesday in a video shared on the White House’s YouTube page before it was taken down. Addressing his guests at the lunch event, which was closed to the press, Trump riffed on NATO allies and criticized them for declining to join the U.S.-Israeli military operation against Iran.

“We didn’t need them, but I asked anyway,” he said, adding: “I call up France, [Emmanuel] Macron – whose wife treats him extremely badly. Still recovering from the right to the jaw.”

The comment appeared to reference a widely circulated video from May 2025 that showed Brigitte Macron pushing the French president’s face during a trip to Vietnam. Macron later said the couple had simply been “joking as we often do.”

On Thursday, Macron hit back with a measured condemnation of the remarks, saying: “The words that I was able to hear, which you refer to, are neither elegant nor of a high standard. That’s it. So I’m not going to answer it, it doesn’t deserve an answer.”

He continued, slamming Trump’s war in Iran: “I’m not going to go in. We’re talking about too serious things. We’re speaking of war. We’re now talking about women and men who are at war. Women and men and civilians who are killed. Of the war that is taking place in this region. We’re also talking about the consequences of this war on our economies. I think of our citizens, the Americans live the same thing, the prices of the gas, the gas that goes.”

Trump’s dig even drew a swift response from opposition lawmakers in France, who slammed them as “unacceptable” and beneath the office of the presidency.

The exchange has unfolded against the backdrop of mounting tensions between Washington and its European allies over Iran, including France’s decision not to participate in strikes.

Trump has complained that NATO allies did not accept his appeal to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the key trade route effectively shuttered due to the conflict, rocking international markets.

The president also threatened to leave the alliance in an interview with The Telegraph on Thursday.

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