Emmanuel Macron has sparked anger and mockery for dispensing with the French president’s traditional Bastille Day television interview because his thoughts are “too complex” for such a forum, reports The Telegraph.
An Élysée official told Le Monde newspaper that the 39-year-old centrist leader’s "complex thought process lends itself badly to the game of question-and-answer with journalists” that is held every year on the July 14 national holiday.
Mr Macron has given just one interview to the press - to a group of European journalists and France’s Le Figaro newspaper - since he was elected last month after a meteoric rise in just one year to from relative obscurity to the pinnacle of power.
Now he is shunning the TV interview French presidents usually hold on Bastille Day after attending the military parade on the Champs Élysées, which this year will include US President Donald Trump among its spectators.
The decision to ditch the interview came despite Mr Macron himself telling a journalist - who ran after him as the former banker was cycling around the Le Touquet holiday resort - that he would answer media questions on July 14.
The decision to ditch the television interview and the reasons given were met with incredulity by many French journalists, who were aggrieved to be told that they might not be bright enough to understand the president’s words.
“Us no understand President Macron” was the mocking headline in Marianne magazine.