NEWS
President Emmanuel Macron of France snapped back at President Trump on Thursday, saying that Trump’s shifting statements about the war in Iran were unserious and that his anger toward NATO was unhelpful. “When you’ve signed a treaty, when you’ve committed to an alliance, when you believe it’s important to defend the security of your allies — or at least your partners — you live up to the commitments you’ve signed,” Macron said. “You don’t comment on them every morning.”
President Emmanuel Macron of France suggested that President Trump’s daily comments on the war in Iran were unserious. “Maybe one shouldn’t speak every day,” Mr. Macron told reporters.
President Emmanuel Macron of France snapped back at President Trump on Thursday, saying that his shifting statements about the Iran war were unserious and that his anger toward NATO was unhelpful. He also said that mocking comments the president made about him personally were unworthy at a time of war.
Speaking in South Korea during a trip through Asia, Mr. Macron refused to respond directly to Mr. Trump’s personal remarks, which were made during an Easter lunch on Wednesday. They included a derogatory reference to an incident with Mr. Macron’s wife, Brigitte, on a plane last year, where Ms. Macron was caught on video appearing to shove her husband.
Mr. Macron told reporters in the capital, Seoul, that Mr. Trump’s remarks were “neither elegant nor befitting.”
“So I’m not going to respond to them; they don’t deserve a response,” he said, clearly bristling.
But Mr. Macron was equally blunt and more elaborate in criticizing Mr. Trump’s shifting accounts of his goals for the U.S. military campaign, and his pivot between promoting negotiations to end the conflict and threatening to escalate strikes on Iran.
“When we’re serious, we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before every day, and maybe one shouldn’t speak every day,” Mr. Macron said. “We just need to calm things down and build lasting peace.”
“We are talking about war, we are talking today about women and men who are in combat, about women, men and civilians who are being killed,” Mr. Macron said. “We’re also talking about the impact of this war on our economies.”