True or false: When he was the U.S. president, Donald Trump called French leader Emmanuel Macron from the White House to wish him happy birthday, but got the day wrong, reports The Independent.
With great relish and a straight face, the French president told that story in a YouTube video that quickly went viral Sunday.
Filmed in the French presidential palace with two of France's most popular YouTube stars, the half-hour of banter, tall tales, and a grungy rendition of “La Marseillaise" by heavy-metal band “Ultra Vomit” represented Macron's most audacious effort yet to woo young voters.
Macron, 43, hasn't yet said if he'll seek reelection in the presidential ballot next year. But one of the takeaways from his playful “anecdote contest” with YouTubers Mcfly and Carlito was that beneath the suit and tie and the buttoned-down trappings of his office, France's youngest president remains a political risk-taker who still gets a thrill and sees electoral capital in shaking up the French establishment and its norms.
Most certainly, he is the first French president to say “oh, merde” — crap — and another naughty word in a YouTube video that racked up 4 million views in eight hours.
His anecdote about Trump calling him on a secure line in 2018 to wish him happy birthday, but on the wrong day, turned out to be a fib, and was correctly identified as such by Carlito.
Read more of this Associated Press story published by The Independent.