• Traveling this Tuesday in Tain-l'Hermitage in the Drôme, Emmanuel Macron was slapped by a young man while he was doing a walkabout.

  • The scene, filmed and broadcast online, overshadowed the rest of this presidential visit devoted to the reopening of restaurants.

  • This is the second stage of a Tour de France launched by the Head of State to get in touch with the French, which he does not want to change after the Drôme incident.

“Neither trivialize nor dramatize.

Emmanuel Macron returned to his ministers on Wednesday on the slap he had received the day before at Tain-l'Hermitage in Drôme, according to the government spokesperson.

A man, arrested the same day, had slapped the head of state who had just started a pre-summer tour of France.

This tour launched last week, officially to "take the pulse" of the French and support the deconfinement of the country, has it been damaged by this incident?

"Relativize" quickly

The head of state quickly tried to minimize the incident, calling on Tuesday to "relativize" this slap. "Let us not let isolated facts, ultraviolent individuals, as there are always some in the demonstrations too, take possession of the public debate: they do not deserve it", he told the daily Le Dauphiné Libéré. The Elysée does not wish to comment on the episode, limiting itself to recalling that the incident did not prevent Emmanuel Macron from continuing to shake hands, and that he even redid a walkabout a little more late in the day, in Valencia this time.

"Zero risk does not exist for the movements of political leaders", judge Francis Chouat, deputy of Essonne and related La République en Marche, who remembers that his relative, Manuel Valls, had "been a victim of the same type of 'aggression "in 2017." We must neither trivialize nor be paralyzed by this type of act, and not give the feeling of being impressed, otherwise it is the Republic which falters, "continues the former socialist.

No change of plan

“I always go in contact, within range of yelling as I say. And I care. People express their anger to me, sometimes their dismay and I am always there ”, also declared the president to the Dauphinois daily. "I will continue to go everywhere". Officially, there will therefore be no change in this presidential tour, for which the details of the dates and places have not been made public, but which should include around ten trips by mid-July. No question either of giving up improvised walkabouts, or of modifying the security system, according to our information.

In the Council of Ministers on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron again stressed that it was necessary to look at the gesture of this man "for what it is, an isolated fact of a violent individual", evoked Gabriel Attal, reaffirming that the 'author "does not appear to be Mr. everyone".

One way not to link this incident with a possible more generalized dissatisfaction of the French.

Paradoxically, a poll * published on the day of the slap in the face credits the Head of State with 50% of favorable opinions, a rating that has risen sharply less than a year from the end of his mandate.

* IFOP Fiducial barometer for

Paris Match

and Sud Radio.

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VIDEO.

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