Emmanuel Macron was humbled this week after New York City cops stopped his vehicle and forced him to wait on the street to make way for Donald Trump’s motorcade.
Footage shows the perplexed French president stranded on a road moments after he left the UN headquarters in the Big Apple on Monday.
‘I’m really sorry, Mr President, everything is frozen’, a police officer can be heard telling Macron.
The French leader then proceeded to take matters into his own hands, and was shown in a separate video calling his American counterpart on the phone.
‘Guess what, I’m waiting in the street right now because everything is frozen for you,’ he appears to tell Trump.
But after several minutes of waiting around, the French president was then forced to walk down the street with his body guards after the roads opened, but only for pedestrians.
Footage of the awkward moment involving Macron, who is in New York for the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, has gone viral on social media. Several internet users have commented on the US president’s apparent power play.
‘That’s not just a mix-up — that’s a power signal. When world leaders get parked so Trump can pass, it tells you everything about who commands respect in the room’, one X user wrote.
Another said: ‘Macron learns who runs thing in America, even off duty’.
‘Humiliating. The French president stuck on the curb while Trump’s motorcade rolls like a king’s parade’, a third commented, while a fourth said: ‘This is not an “awkward moment”. This is a protocol breach and a serious insult.’
The mishap involving Macron comes after new polling data revealed yesterday that his popularity in France has plunged to an all-time low.
The embattled president’s approval rating has fallen to 17%, the lowest it has been since taking office in 2017.
The results of the Ifop survey conducted for French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche came after nearly one million workers and anti-austerity marchers took to the streets to protest Macron’s handling of France’s economy.
As the country endured outbursts of carnage and violence, images from the streets of the capital last Thursday showed major clashes breaking out between cops and rioters.
Protesters set fire to wooden pallets outside the city’s main train station, the Gare du Nord, while officers battled crowds of demonstrators in billowing clouds of tear gas smoke.
Masked students carrying banners and placards calling to ‘tax the rich’ also waved red flares in front of armoured police as they blocked the entrance of the Lycee Maurice Ravel high school as part of the nationwide protests against the government’s budget cut plans.
The strikes, among the latest humiliation for Macron, came barely a week after Sébastien Lecornu was appointed prime minister following the toppling of Francois Bayrou’s government.
Unions have called for more spending on public services, higher taxes on the wealthy and for the budget cuts outlined by the short-lived Bayrou government to be axed.
Macron has been battered by several major uprisings, including the Yellow Vest protest in 2018 and the pension reforms revolt in 2023.
His current predicament is seen as one he created. Last year, in an attempt to delivery a healthy majority ahead of Paris Olympics, he called a snap election.
But this move backfired, resulting in a hung parliament that has made legislation even more difficult to pass.
This difficulty has left France with a swelling public debt crisis, aggravated by the pandemic, a major European energy crisis and high global interest rates.
France’s deficit rose to 5.8% of its GDP last year, far surpassing the 3% limit set by the EU.
It is the largest deficit France has had since the end of the Second World War.
