President Emmanuel Macron of France snapped back at President Trump on Thursday, saying that his shifting statements about the Iran war were unserious and that his anger toward NATO was unhelpful. He also said that mocking comments the president made about him personally were unworthy at a time of war.
Speaking in South Korea during a trip through Asia, Mr. Macron refused to respond directly to Mr. Trump’s personal remarks, which were made during an Easter lunch on Wednesday. They included a derogatory reference to an incident with Mr. Macron’s wife, Brigitte, on a plane last year, where Ms. Macron was caught on video appearing to shove her husband.
Mr. Macron told reporters in the capital, Seoul, that Mr. Trump’s remarks were “neither elegant nor befitting.”
“So I’m not going to respond to them; they don’t deserve a response,” he said, clearly bristling.
But Mr. Macron was equally blunt and more elaborate in criticizing Mr. Trump’s shifting accounts of his goals for the U.S. military campaign, and his pivot between promoting negotiations to end the conflict and threatening to escalate strikes on Iran.
“When we’re serious, we don’t say the opposite of what we said the day before every day, and maybe one shouldn’t speak every day,” Mr. Macron said. “We just need to calm things down and build lasting peace.”
“We are talking about war, we are talking today about women and men who are in combat, about women, men and civilians who are being killed,” Mr. Macron said. “We’re also talking about the impact of this war on our economies.”
Mr. Macron said Mr. Trump’s mounting attacks on NATO, which he has accused of not helping the United States, were weakening the alliance. In an interview with The Telegraph newspaper published on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said again that he was considering withdrawing from the alliance.
“If you create doubt every day about your commitment, you hollow it out,” Mr. Macron said of Mr. Trump.
“When you’ve signed a treaty, when you’ve committed to an alliance, when you believe it’s important to defend the security of your allies — or at least your partners — you live up to the commitments you’ve signed,” Mr. Macron continued. “You don’t comment on them every morning.”
Mr. Macron also flatly rejected Mr. Trump’s demand that European countries reopen the Strait of Hormuz, by force if necessary. France and Britain are marshaling a coalition of countries to escort ships through the strait, though they have made clear that it would happen only after the conflict ended.
“That has never been the option we have chosen, and we consider it unrealistic,” Mr. Macron said, adding that it would take “an infinite amount of time” and would expose ships passing through the strait to Iranian attacks.
Mr. Trump’s relationship with Mr. Macron has had its dizzying ups and downs. During Mr. Trump’s first term, the two men bonded at a military parade in Paris. Years later, after an Israeli strike on Iran in 2025, Mr. Trump complained that Mr. Macron “always gets it wrong.”
More recently, the two leaders appeared to be on better terms. In mid-March, after a phone call with Mr. Macron about Iran, Mr. Trump said, “On a scale of 0 to 10, I’d say he’s been an 8. Not perfect, but it’s France. We don’t expect perfect.”
But as France has refused to get more deeply involved in the war, Mr. Trump’s mood has soured. His mockery of the incident with Ms. Macron, which Mr. Macron has denied was a dispute, is a new low in their relationship.
Mark Landler is the Paris bureau chief of The Times, covering France, as well as American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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