‘President Emmanuel Macron slapped in the face during walkabout in Southern France’
French news broadcaster BFM TV said two people have been detained by police.
The man, who was wearing a mask, appears to have cried out “Montjoie! Saint Denis!”, a centuries-old royalist war cry, before finishing with “A bas la Macronie”, or “Down with Macron”.
A video making rounds on social media shows Macron reaching out his hand to greet the Man in khaki T-shirt who was among onlookers standing behind the metal barrier. The Man slapped Macron on the left side of his face.
Two of Macron’s security detail tackled the man in the T-shirt, and another ushered Macron away. Another video posted on Twitter showed that the president, a few seconds later, returned to the line of onlookers and resumed shaking hands.
In 2018, the royalist call was cried out by someone who threw a cream pie at far-left lawmaker Éric Coquerel. At the time, the extreme-right, monarchist group Action Française took responsibility for that action. Coquerel on Tuesday expressed his solidarity with Macron.
The local mayor, Xavier Angeli, told franceinfo radio that Macron urged his security to “leave him, leave him” as the offender was being held to the ground.
The identity of the man who slapped Macron, and his motives, were unclear.
The slogan the man shouted has been co-opted in the past few years by royalists and people on the far-right in France, Fiametta Venner, a political scientist who studies French extremists, told broadcaster BFMTV.
Macron was on a visit to the Drome region to meet restaurateurs and students and talk about returning to a normal life after the COVID-19 pandemic.
