Breaking news: France President was slapped in public

France: A video was circulated on social media in which, France president Emmanuel  Macron reached out his hand to greet a man in a small crowd of onlookers standing behind a metal barrier as he visited a professional training college for the hospitality industry.

Emmanuel Macron was on a visit to the Drome region to meet restaurateurs and students and talk about returning to a normal life after the COVID-19 pandemic. It was one of the series of visits he is making and wanted to take the nation’s pulse before a presidential election next year.

The man, who slapped the president was dressed in a khaki T-shirt, then shouted “Down with Macronia” (“A Bas La Macronie”) and slapped Macron on the left side of his face. He could also be heard shouting “Montjoie Saint-Denis”, the battle cry of the French army when the country was still a monarchy.

Macron’s security detail tackled the man in the T-shirt, and another ushered Macron away from the area of attack. Another video posted on Twitter showed that the president, a few seconds later, returned to the line of onlookers and resumed shaking hands.

According to the reports revealed, two people were arrested and the man who slapped president Emmanuel Macron, and his motives are being investigated. It is said that the slogan, the man shouted has been co-opted in the past few years by royalists and people on the far-right in France.

Macron in an interview said that he does not fear about his safety, and had continued shaking hands with members of the public even after he was slapped and reiterated that nothing will stop him and he will be going ahead further.

Emmanuel Macron, who was an economic minister in 2016, also has an incident to describe that he was pelted with eggs by hard-left trade unionists during a strike against labour reforms. Macron described that incident as “par for the course” and said it would not curb his determination. Two years later, anti-government “yellow vest” protesters heckled and booed Macron in an incident that left the president in shock.