During his speeches or his interviews, lovers of flowery expressions prick up their ears: the president may be going to make a literary outing of which he has the secret. Bingo! Monday May 15, 2023, at 8 p.m. on TF1, Emmanuel Macron exclaimed: “Do you think it’s good for my apple to do what we do on pensions, to carry difficult texts?”. A reference to 1924 slang.

Accused by opponents of the pension reform of being contemptuous, the president quoted a song by Maurice Chevalier whose chorus goes: “My apple, It’s me, I’m happier than a king, I don’t never make me foam, In soft, I push myself”. A beautiful tribute to the popularization in 1936 of an expression that is, to say the least, colorful. It must be said that the president is a literary upset.

Educated at the private Catholic high school La Providence (Amiens), Emmanuel Macron obtained a “regional mention” in the general French competition in 1994. While he obtained the scientific baccalaureate with the mention “very good” at the Lycée Henri-IV (Paris) , Emmanuel Macron rewrote with Brigitte Trogneux, his theater teacher, a play by Italian author Eduardo De Filippo: The Art of Comedy.

A graduate of a scientific training, the future president did not abandon literature and joined the hypokhâgne, then the khâgne, B/L of the Lycée Henri-IV. In 1998, he joined the Institute of Political Studies in Paris. A graduate of Sciences Po in 2001, he also followed a course in philosophy at the University of Paris-Nanterre. Finally, he continued his studies at the ENA in Strasbourg (2002-2004).

Becoming Head of State in 2017, Emmanuel Macron does not hide his passion for literature and the French language. He frequently quotes great writers and claims, in a Facebook post of May 26, 2021: “As President of the Republic, I am a protector of the French language”. Discover in our slideshow below the most incomprehensible expressions used by Emmanuel Macron.