“Over the years, gentleness and smoothness have been replaced by a more authoritarian, monarchical and brittle side”: author of a biography of Emmanuel Macron, Etienne Campion paints an unusual psychological portrait of the French president. The journalist reveals some passages on Wednesday in the morning.
Thanks to a hundred testimonies collected within his entourage and former relatives, Etienne Campion describes Emmanuel Macron as a talented man to climb the ladder, seducer and beautiful speaker, who has become “brittle”, who “tyrannizes without real apparent logic” and who isolated “to better benefit from a more lonely power”.
In a word, according to the journalist of the weekly Marianne: “toxic”. Hence the title of his book “The Toxic President. Investigation of the real Emmanuel Macron”, published by Robert Laffont editions in February.
Childhood lonely
To understand the tenant of the Elysée, Etienne Campion went back to his childhood in the 1980s in Amiens, in the north of France. He describes little Emmanuel as “desynchronized” and “lonely” vis-à-vis other children of his age and his family.
“The young Emmanuel Macron is disinterested in his brothers and sisters, and his parents. He does not seek friendships among the other children to create an identity,” said Etienne Campion.
Her relationship with her grandmother is an exception, this woman also living in relation to the rest of the world.
“In his autobiography” Revolution “(published in 2016, note), he says he himself desynchronized by his grandmother, because she is an old teacher of the Third Republic who makes him live in the heights of the past, “says the French journalist.
Fateful dissolution
Today, the president is more isolated than ever. Its dissolution of the National Assembly last year – an act which “has no rationality” – has led to a loss of support within its electorate, its teams and the French elite.
As a result, he has only the international level to shine. “Even if he wipes a lot of setbacks-we have seen him recently with Algeria-he keeps this position as a super-diplomatic president. He created a new stature in the presidential function,” said the journalist.
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Not “a simple mortal”
Emmanuel Macron is convinced that he could “return” his opponent by his only eloquence and get out of all the kneaders.
He is also convinced that he is exceptional. A character trait that allows him to survive the many crises he has gone through. The word “surviving” is not even really a figure in style: “He said after dissolution that if he had been sentimental, he would have committed suicide. This sentence is fascinating. He says hollow: If I had been a simple mortal, I would never have supported it all“, Analysis Etienne Campion.
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Interview by Delphine Gendre
Text: Antoine Michel
