Emmanuel Macron denied this Saturday on the microphone of our journalist Paul Larrouturou that he had asserted that “smicards prefer telephones and VOD subscriptions rather than a healthier diet”.The newspaper La Marseillaise attributed these remarks to the head of state in its front page of the day.
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The 2024 Agricultural Show under high tension
An angry President of the Republic. Visibly exasperated, Emmanuel Macron denied this Saturday during the very agitated opening of the Agricultural Show rumors according to which he had criticized “smicards” who would prefer “phones and VOD subscriptions rather than a healthier diet” during a meeting on February 14 with Modef, a minority union close to the Communist Party.
“Ethically, it’s shameful. I have never uttered a sentence like that“, insists the Head of State into Paul Larrouturou’s microphone. “I said, what I have already said several times publicly, that the problem we have in the country today is that the share of income that the French allocate to food has fallen in thirty years. People are spending more money on housing, telephone subscriptions, television or travel. The lifestyle has changed and (people in France) spend proportionately less on food.”he continues.
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In passing, the resident of the Élysée scratched the journalists of The Marseillaisewhich made its front page of the day on these remarks. “You can imagine the ethics of your colleagues who managed to put on the front page of a sentence that someone said that I would have said”he tackles. “We have to stop the bullshit, making me say things behind the doors”he fumes.
As a reminder, the regional daily cites as a source “a trade unionist from the Agricultural Union Confederation of Family Farmers (Modef) present at the meeting”. Lucie Illy, vice-president of Modef and present at this meeting, told AFP that “the president did not express himself in these terms, but the substance is the same”.