PARIS: A video surfaced Tuesday of French President Emmanuel Macron singing a traditional song in the street after a televised address in which he sought to soothe tensions over his unpopular pension reforms.
Many Internet users suspected the footage was faked using AI or other means when it first emerged, but people close to Macron told AFP it was genuine.
“The president took a moment with his wife (Brigitte Macron) after his speech (on Monday evening). They encountered a group of young people who were singing... so he joined them in a song from the Pyrenees which he knows and loves,” they said.
In the night-time video, Macron can be seen reading from his phone the words of “Le Refuge,” a song about a lodge in the mountain range on France’s southwestern border with Spain, surrounded by men in their 20s and 30s singing vigorously.
The incident might at first have seemed a welcome show of connection with voters for the president, whose reforms including an increase to the pension age have earned him widespread animosity in recent weeks.
But the video was first published on the Facebook page of an organization called “Projet Canto.”
While the group describes itself as preserving traditional songs in digital form, left-wing newspaper Liberation reported last year that it was founded and run by far-right activists and offered recordings of songs with ties to Nazi Germany in its app.
Macron “could not have known in the moment the backgrounds of every person he was speaking to,” the person in his entourage said.
The group told Liberation last year that “political songs are part of the history of song, that’s why we’ve stored them,” saying it also had “far-left” songs in its catalogue.
Macron previously sang “Le Refuge” during a trip to the Upper Pyrenees in 2022.
Macron seen singing in the streets after pensions address
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Macron seen singing in the streets after pensions address
- Many internet users suspected the footage was faked using AI or other means when it first emerged
- In the night-time video, Macron can be seen reading from his phone the words of "Le Refuge"
Trump insists he struck Iran on his own terms
- “We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X.
- Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway”
WASHINGTON, United States: President Donald Trump and his team scrambled Tuesday to reclaim the narrative on why he decided to attack Iran, after his top diplomat suggested the US struck only after learning of an imminent Israeli strike.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio alarmed Democrats — who say only Congress can declare war — as well as many of Trump’s MAGA supporters on Monday when he said: “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action.”
“We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t pre-emptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio told reporters.
Administration officials quickly backpedalled, insisting Trump authorized the strikes because Tehran was not seriously negotiating an accord on limiting its nuclear ambitions, and the United States needed to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities.
“No, Marco Rubio Didn’t Claim That Israel Dragged Trump into War with Iran,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted Tuesday on X.
At an Oval Office meeting later with Germany’s chancellor, Trump went further, saying that “Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they (Iran) were going to attack first. And I didn’t want that to happen.”
“So, if anything, I might have forced Israel’s hand.”
- Had to happen? -
Rubio himself doubled down on Tuesday after meeting with US House and Senate members, while insisting that “No, I told you this had to happen anyway.”
“The president made a decision. The decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide... behind this ability to conduct an attack.”
Critics seized on the muddied messaging to accuse Trump of precipitating the country into a war without a clear rationale, without informing Congress — and without a clear idea of how it might end.
They noted that just two weeks ago, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pressed Trump again in Washington to take a hard line, in their seventh meeting since Trump’s return to power last year.
Some Republican allies rallied behind the president, with Senator Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, insisting that “No one pushes or drags Donald Trump anywhere.”
“He acts in the vital national security interest of the United States,” Cotton told the “Fox & Friends” morning show.
But as crucial US midterm elections approach that could see Republicans lose their congressional majority, Trump risks shedding supporters who had welcomed his pledge to end foreign military interventions.
“We are now a nation divided between those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, a top former Trump ally and a major figure in the populist and isolationist hard right, posted on X.
