A French child surprised President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday with an awkward question about the slap he received about a week ago from a citizen during a visit to the southeastern part of the country. French media reported that during Macron's visit to the French department of La Somme, he received an unexpected and embarrassing question from a school child in the town of Bois de Picardie.
After asking for permission to speak in the schoolyard, the child approached the French president and asked, "Are you okay after the slap you received?" Macron smiled and replied, "Yes, I'm fine; it's not pleasant, and it's not good." The French president continued, saying, "It's not at all good for someone to hit another - even in the schoolyard - the one who slapped me was not right."
During a visit he was making to the "Tan l'Hermitage" area in the southeastern part of the country, the French president approached a crowd of citizens to greet them, when a young man grabbed his hand and slapped him in the face. The young man repeated a phrase known to supporters of the past French monarchy before security intervened and arrested the citizen, along with another person who was filming the incident.
A French court in Valence sentenced Damien Tarell, who assaulted the French president, to four months in prison last Thursday, and according to the court's decision, the sentence must be executed immediately.
For his part, President Emmanuel Macron downplayed the incident on the eighth of this month (the day the slap occurred), blaming "very violent" individuals. He told the "Dauphiné Libéré" newspaper in an interview after the incident, which took place in the village of Tain l'Hermitage in the Drôme region: "I'm fine; we should put this incident, which I think is an individual occurrence, into the correct perspective."
This was not the first time Macron faced such an incident. When he was Minister of Economy, he was hit with eggs by protesters opposed to the labor law in Montreuil on June 6, 2016. When he was a candidate for the presidency in 2017, eggs were thrown at him during the agricultural fair, and he said at the time it was "part of the folklore."
