This little phrase in the Parisian unleashed passions for two days, in the midst of discussions in the Assembly on the vaccination pass. “I really want to piss off the unvaccinated,” the kind of phrase a president is not supposed to say, as many of his opponents have pointed out. Defended by his majority, in particular Gabriel Attal who asked “who is pissing off whose life today?” “Emmanuel Macron said Friday to” fully “assume his exit.
“We can be moved by forms of expression which seem familiar that I fully assume”, declared the French president during a press conference at the Elysee Palace, before adding: “I am moved by the situation in which we are, the real divide of the country is there, when some make of their freedom, which becomes an irresponsibility, a slogan ”.
Marine Le Pen describes him as an “arsonist”
This new statement, delivered alongside the President of the European Commission Ursula Van der Leyen, comes on the eve of new protests against the vaccine pass. The authorities anticipate a new rebound in mobilization with 29,000 to 39,000 demonstrators expected throughout France, against 25,500 before Christmas, according to a police source.
But this episode also allowed him, according to the majority, to say aloud what many French people think softly, and to push the oppositions, right and far-right in the lead, to their limits, by forcing them to clarify their position vis-à-vis -to the non-vaccinated and the vaccination pass. Thus, the presidential majority underlined the disintegration of the unity of the Republicans group during the vote on the vaccination pass.
Marine Le Pen, back in the field on Friday, in Béziers, the city of Robert Ménard, to pay tribute to Jean Moulin, figure of the Resistance, again attacked Emmanuel Macron, “an arsonist who comes to blow up the debate” on the management of the pandemic. Another far-right candidate, Eric Zemmour had already accused the president of setting a “trap” by making “the Covid the subject of the presidential election”.