CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

‘Macron – Whose Wife Treats Him Extremely Badly’: Trump’s Iran War Unraveling

“I call up France, Macron – whose wife treats him extremely badly. Still recovering from the right to the jaw.”

It is not the first time that Donald Trump has resorted to this kind of language. But the timing, as always, is everything.

His remarks about Emmanuel Macron, delivered during a private lunch in Washington, were crude and personal, yet also deeply political.

Macron’s response—measured but unmistakable—was to dismiss them as “neither elegant nor up to standard,” adding that they did not merit a reply.

But to treat this as merely another episode of improvised rhetoric is to miss its significance.

Trump’s attack on Macron did not emerge in a vacuum. It came as part of a broader complaint, one that placed France—and by extension other NATO allies—at the center of a narrative of absence.

“We didn’t need them, but I asked anyway,” Trump said, before mocking Macron’s supposed refusal to provide immediate military support in the Gulf.

France, in this framing, is no longer an ally acting according to its own calculations. It becomes something else: an explanation.

This, too, is not new. Trump has long directed extraordinary time and energy toward attacking individuals, often in language that is not only unfit for a president, but for any public figure claiming seriousness or dignity.

At various moments, this behavior was dismissed as style, as bluntness, or even as political theater. Critics pointed to belligerence, bullying, harassment. All true, of course—but not sufficient.

Because there is more to the story.

Another defining aspect of Trump’s political conduct is his relationship with truth. In US media, this is often softened as “contradiction.” But........

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