“The non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off,” Emmanuel Macron said in January in an interview with Le Parisien. A sentence which had sparked controversy at the time and which has remained in the minds of some French people: the outgoing president was questioned on this subject this Monday, February 11, during a trip to Denain (North).
“You said” piss off the non-vaccinated “, that we were sub-citizens, we still took it in the face”, launched a passerby who had already been talking for a few minutes with Emmanuel Macron.
“I never said sub-citizens,” replied the latter. As for the fact of “annoying” the non-vaccinated, it was said “in a way, in quotation marks, affectionate”, pleaded the candidate president, whose remarks were relayed by franceinfo.
A formula that did not fail to make his interlocutor react: “Okay, so it’s affectionate to annoy people? When someone says to me “fuck you”, excuse me Mr. Macron, I don’t take it kindly”.
Because “that’s an insult”, defended Emmanuel Macron, who believes that his January remarks were not one. “It must be put into context,” assured the outgoing president.
“We will always treat people”
Referring to the interview given to Le Parisien at the time, in which he exchanged with readers, he explained: “Some of your nursing colleagues who had been vaccinated had said “people who are not vaccinated and who arrive, they should no longer be treated”. To which I replied “I will never do that as president, we will always treat people, whatever they choose.”
The Head of State continued with a quick reference to “one of [ses] predecessors”, Georges Pompidou, who “said ‘we are not here to piss off the French'”. “Here I say, here we put constraints, I am a little there to try to annoy those who are not vaccinated. It was not an insult and it was in context.
On April 7, Emmanuel Macron had already returned to his remarks, again in the columns of Parisian. “When I said that in front of the readers of this newspaper, it didn’t shock anyone in the room,” he said. I was even the most moderate of the band”.