True or False: When he was president of the United States, Donald Trump called his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron from the White House to wish him a happy birthday, but he did it on the wrong day.
Remarkably enthusiastic and with a serious expression, the president of France recounted this and other stories in a video posted on YouTube Sunday that quickly went viral.
The half-hour talk, recorded at the Elysee Palace with two of the most popular youtubers in France, included anecdotes and an interpretation of “La Marseillaise” with a certain grunge tone by the heavy metal group “Ultra Vomit”, in what has been Macron’s boldest attempt to date to appeal to young voters.
Macron, 43, has yet to say whether he will seek re-election in next year’s presidential election. But one of the revelations of his “anecdote contest” with YouTubers Mcfly and Carlito is that, underneath his suit and tie and the elegant ornaments of his office, the youngest president in the history of France is still someone without fear. to take political risks, who is still excited and sees the electoral value of shaking up the French elite and altering its norms.
He is, after all, the first president of France to say the odd bad word in a YouTube video that was viewed 4 million times in eight hours.
His anecdote about Trump’s call in 2018 to wish him a happy birthday on the wrong day turned out to be false, as Carlito guessed. Seeing Macron so comfortable while altering the truth a bit, albeit in jest, was revealing. The president is convincing when it comes to telling white lies.
“My birthday is December 21, and this happened on December 19,” Macron said while looking directly into the eyes of his interlocutors. “He said, ‘I know it’s today,’ and so on. I said, ‘Thank you’ and pretended that everything was fine. I couldn’t say, ‘It’s in two days.’
In the contest, which awarded one point for each anecdote that was correctly identified as being true or false, Macron and the youtubers finished tied at 4.
That means that both parties will now have to complete the challenges they committed to at the start of the program.
For Mcfly and Carlito, that means a trip with the French Air Force’s formation flight team, the Patrouille de France.
Macron, for his part, promised to place photographs of the youtubers on his desk behind him during a televised address to the nation in the future.
A small price to pay in order to attract young voters.
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