Over the weekend, this video of French President Emmanuel Macron being shoved in the face by his wife, the First Lady Brigitte Macron, was trending because it is inexplicable and shocking.
The French government tried to deny the authenticity of the images but later said that the couple were just “horsing around” and “joking.”
It highlights uncomfortable truths about the Macrons, namely that the President was groomed by his wife as a young teenager and that their relationship began under power-imbalanced, ethically fraught conditions. This behavior begs the question about a continued unhealthy dynamic. Has it been like this since the President was a 14 year-old student?
It brings up continued unanswered questions about the couple, namely that they have never satisfactorily proven that she is a woman, that they have never answered for the fact that the works of André Gide, an avowed pederast, are featured in the Presidential portrait, and that their admission of his age when they met changed from 17 to 14.
If a woman had been groomed by a much-older male teacher and then caught on video being shoved in the face in this way, would we react differently? This is an uncomfortable thing to confront and getting even harder to ignore.
