French president hits back after Trump mocks how his wife treats him

French President Emmanuel Macron hit back at Donald Trump on Thursday after the US president mocked Macron’s relationship with his wife as he chided France for refusing to join the US-Israeli offensive against Iran.The two leaders have touted their friendly relationship in the past, especially during Trump’s first term in office. But at a private event Wednesday, Trump lambasted the French leader for not coming to America’s aid in the Middle East.“I called up France, Macron, whose wife treats him extremely badly, (he is) still recovering from the right to the jaw,” the US president said, apparently referencing a video from 2025 in which Brigitte Macron appeared to shove her husband in the face aboard the French presidential jet.Pressed to respond to Trump’s comments during an official visit to South Korea on Thursday, Macron said that his US counterpart’s words “weren’t elegant, and they weren’t up to par.”

Macron’s wife, nearly 25 years his senior, has been a sensitive subject for the French president. Last year, the couple filed a defamation lawsuit against US podcaster Candace Owens over baseless claims that Brigitte could be a man.

While European allies were broadly supportive of the US-Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure last year, the scale of the current campaign and the lack of a clear strategy this time around have limited support.

France has deployed some military forces to the Persian Gulf region, sending jets and air defense systems to protect Arab allies in the gulf and deploying naval assets off the coast of Cyprus, a European Union member that has come under drone attack.

However, the French leader has refused to backstop the American campaign with naval assets to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The French offer to provide protective ships once fighting has peaked has drawn mockery from the White House.

But France has held firm, joining European allies Spain and Italy in banning the use of its airbases to US aircraft taking part in the bombing campaign.

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron meet on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Brussels in 2017. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The French and US leaders enjoyed a chummy relationship during Trump’s first term, but they have clashed over international policy over the last year.

What started as a very public battle of wills, with the two physically testing each other’s handshakes during their first meetings in Trump’s first term, has morphed into far more personal sparring. Trump has shared private messages from the French president and has regularly done impressions of the Frenchman in public.

As for Macron, he appeared visibly annoyed at having to respond to Trump’s comments on his wife Thursday, and he has grown accustomed to sharing sometimes stern rebukes of White House policy — and tariffs — during Trump’s second term.

Trump’s latest comments sparked a backlash in France, where the personal lives of politicians are granted far greater privacy than in the United States.

Leading far-left lawmaker Manuel Bompard called the US president’s comments “absolutely unacceptable,” while the centrist president of the French National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, also criticized Trump.

“We are currently discussing the future of the world,” she said. “We see that our countrymen are extremely affected, and during this, there are people dying on the battlefield, and we have a president who is laughing, who is mocking others,” she told French radio station France Info.

Elina Baudier Kim contributed to this report.

London —  

US President Donald Trump has asked European allies for a lot lately – the use of military bases, the potential relocation of missile defense systems and generally stronger support for US military action against Iran.Many responses have been lukewarm, with allies offering limited defensive support but also repeatedly calling for de-escalation. But increasingly, White House requests have been met with a firm “no.” Or nie, non, rifiuto.This week, Italy denied a US request for aircraft to land at a military base in Sicily, according to state broadcaster RAI on Tuesday.RAI reported that “the (US) plan had been communicated while the aircraft were already in flight, and checks revealed that these were not normal or logistical flights and therefore not covered by the treaty with Italy.” An Italian defense ministry spokesperson confirmed the reports to CNN but declined to comment further.

The office of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – one of Trump’s key allies in Europe – said Italy was “acting in full compliance with existing international agreements.” Reading between the lines of the official statements, it appears that means Italy considers any offensive actions related to attacks on Iran not in compliance.

Along with the United Kingdom, France and Germany, Italy has joined efforts to send air defense assistance to Gulf allies. But when it comes to the offensive campaign, Meloni has joined the chorus of European leaders calling the war in Iran illegal, or as she put it, “outside the scope of international law.”

“One key issue for European countries is the issue of legality,” said Kamil Zwolski, a fellow on terrorism and conflict studies at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “What Europeans mean when they say that this war has no legal basis is that the United Nations has not approved it – there was no resolution. They also mean that this is not a war of self-defense, because there was no evidence of imminent attack of Iran against the US or Israel.”

“At the minimum, what they also mean is that this war was not agreed by NATO allies. They were not consulted,” Zwolski told CNN.

Against that backdrop, other examples of European refusals and hesitations are mounting.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has perhaps been the most outspoken – doubling down on his condemnation of US strikes and his position of not authorizing the use of Spanish military bases or airspace for any activity relating to war in Iran.

Rather than tread lightly, Spain’s defense minister Margarita Robles Fernández has called the war launched by the US and Israel “profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust.”

Meanwhile, Poland’s defense minister has said the country will not relocate any of its Patriot missile batteries, which it’s using to protect NATO’s eastern flank amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The minister’s comments come as Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday that the US requested that the country consider redeploying one of its Patriot missile batteries to the Middle East during unofficial talks with Polish representatives. Other media reported that the US posed the same question to all NATO allies. CNN could not independently confirm those reports but has asked NATO for comment.

The UK said on Tuesday that it is sending additional air defense systems to Persian Gulf nations to support the “collective defense of allies” as “Iran’s aggressive missiles and drone attacks” continue across the region. But even that hasn’t guarded Britain against Trump’s frequent criticism.

Trump’s criticism intensifies

On Tuesday, Trump lashed out broadly at European allies for not getting more involved in the war, saying that the United States would not be there to help them in the future.

“All of those countries that can’t get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you: Number 1, buy from the US, we have plenty, and Number 2, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT. You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

“Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil,” Trump said.

In a later post, he added: “The country of France wouldn’t let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory,” saying that France has been “very unhelpful” and warning the US would remember.

“Trump has been astonishingly inconsistent in his criticism,” RUSI analyst Zwolski said. “He is going from ‘we don’t need the support of European allies’ to ‘why won’t they help us, they are ungrateful.’”

Zwolski also argued that Trump’s comments about the NATO alliance have been astonishing, as the US president indicates that his country will not be as willing to defend its allies in the future.

“The only country that has directly benefited from NATO military action is the United States, when NATO’s Article Five was invoked for the first time after the September 11 attacks,” Zwolski said. “And European leaders in this case are right to point out that NATO is a collective self-defense organization … It’s not an organization to be used as a toolbox for foreign interventions that were not even consulted.”

Of course, not all of Europe is aligned in their response on the Iran war. Some countries, like the Baltic nations, will be unwilling to upset Trump given their proximity to the war in Ukraine. And some, including the UK, will most likely continue trying to walk a fine line to preserve their good relations with the US.

But it’s telling that even a perceived close ally, like the right-wing Italian government, has denied a US military request.

“Meloni’s relationship with Trump has always been based more on politics than on policies,” said Riccardo Alcaro, head of research and coordinator of the Global Actors program at the Rome-based think tank Institute of International Affairs (IAI).

Alcaro noted that the two leaders share an opposition to migration, but Trump’s actions on tariffs, trade, support for Ukraine, and more broadly on international security do not align with Italy’s interests.

The analyst also said he believes that Trump “holds the Europeans in little regard, because he sees them as free riders … In his view, the United States is providing security to the Europeans. But the Europeans are starting to have doubts about it.”

It is true that the United States remains “the main guarantee against territorial aggression against any of the NATO member states,” Alcaro told CNN. But it’s also true that Europeans have been paying for military support for Ukraine without help from the Trump administration, and that “the rhetoric coming out of Washington is not really reassuring for the Europeans.”