The Macron presidency began with an object lesson that the Secretary General of the Elysée, Alexis Kohler, had developed by seeking from the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck the justification for not saying anything about the corridors of power: “If people knew how sausages are made, it is not certain that they would continue to eat them.” Suffice to say that the doors and windows of the palace were closed to curious journalists, one more way to break with the Hollande five-year term. The president himself had publicly adopted the recipe. “I never told the story behind the scenes,” he remarked in 2018 during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he was questioned about a heated phone call with Donald Trump. And immediately quote Bismarck…
Here, we lock. This is the message that a certain Alexis Kohler transmitted to a certain Bruno Le Maire in the fall of 2017. The Minister of the Economy was furious to read in The chained Duck that Emmanuel Macron would not get angry at him. The secretary general of the Elysée is categorical: wooden cross iron cross, the president did not express himself in this way. The head of state even asks his entourage to call the editorial staff of the weekly to deny it.
It’s crazy how times change. We forget everything and do exactly the opposite. For several days, the Elysée has embarked on an Open Days operation, the main victim of which is Bruno Le Maire. Episode 1: April 4, Le Figaro publishes a very well-informed article on “Macron’s blood attack against Le Maire”. A scene from a meeting of the president with some ministers is recounted, punctuated by this quote from the head of state: “Bruno, you’ve been here for seven years.” Episode 2. On April 8, Emmanuel Macron made a very unusual appearance during the weekly coordination meeting which brought together majority leaders around Alexis Kohler. Normally, nothing that is said there comes out of the walls. This time, the trumpets are out. Emmanuel Macron’s words are making the rounds in Paris: “I hear about PLFR (reformative finance bill, a text of government origin which aims to rectify the budget voted for the year, Editor’s note). I “I don’t see the point. The government must do things seriously to meet our objectives. We do not have a problem of excessive spending, but a problem of lower revenues.” The Elysée even takes the liberty of confirming them to the newspaper The world – the time of denials seems very distant.
Initially, there wasn’t supposed to be any sausage on the menu. This time, dare we say that the sausage is a little big? It is therefore in the press that the confrontation between the Head of State and the Minister of the Economy takes place. This president who did not like leaks now seems to be organizing them… Is the panic of the executive in the face of the country’s financial situation such that it leads to a forgetting of all the rules from the beginning? Angers are staged more and more repeatedly, and chance rarely has its place. “Emmanuel Macron sometimes prepares in advance certain short sentences which he then pronounces in the council of ministers and arranges for them to leave behind closed doors at the Élysée,” says a former palace advisor.
Sometimes sausages turn sour, and that’s never a good sign. If chance does not exist, clumsiness sometimes borders on amateurism: when we organize escapes, we avoid getting tripped up. As proof, the incredible failure in Rwanda. The Elysée, Thursday: “The Head of State will recall that when the phase of total extermination of the Tutsis began, the international community had the means to know and act […] and that France, which could have stopped the genocide with its Western and African allies, did not have the will.” The president, on Sunday: “I think I said everything on May 27, 2021 when I was among you . I have no word to add, no word to subtract from what I told you that day.” The president’s voices are decidedly impenetrable.
In diplomatic matters, Emmanuel Macron is not on his first try – in terms of blunders of course, or calculations too subtle to be understandable. We remember the broadcast, in a documentary A president, Europe and war on France 2, of a Macron-Putin telephone conversation, recorded without the latter’s knowledge, which had pushed Moscow to speak of a violation of “diplomatic etiquette”. We were then at the heart of international cuisine, the one that the whole world follows very closely…
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