Jean Castex took care of the explanation of the text himself. On Wednesday January 5, at 3 p.m., the Prime Minister came to answer senators’ questions. From the start of the session, the president of the Les Républicains (LR) group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, questioned him on the interview with Emanuel Macron published in The Parisian, Tuesday evening. “ These words, I won’t say them, said the senator from Vendée, referring to the fact that the President of the Republic assumed to want “Piss off” the unvaccinated. No health emergency justifies words of such brutality, such indignity. (…) Mr. Prime Minister, while our political debate is polluted by violence, do you think that the response to violence is another form of violence, verbal violence? Mayor, would you have used those words with that meaning? “
Unsurprisingly, the Prime Minister, while refraining from justifying the rudeness of the remarks, defended the Head of State by placing himself on the side of the majority that the vaccinated people represent and by affirming that this statement was shared by some French. “What the President of the Republic said, I hear it everywhere and you know it, he said. There is a form of exasperation of our citizens to see a whole form of constraints imposed on them when others choose to free themselves from it, (…) the words of the President of the Republic are fully consistent with what we do. Mr. Castex also felt that “The tiny minority” unvaccinated people “Fracture the nation”.
Then expected at the National Assembly, where the examination of the text on the vaccination pass was once again interrupted during the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, Mr. Castex criticized a form of obstruction of the oppositions: “I note with regret that every reason is being used to delay the review. We need to get things going again. This text is a major tool in the fight against the pandemic, we need it! “ Mr. Retailleau concluded, in a scathing fashion, still on the subject of Mr. Macron’s interview: “These words are not one more slip, they are too much outrage. ”
Responding to a question from Senator Hervé Marseille, president of the centrist Union group, the Prime Minister once again pointed out the responsibility of the unvaccinated, as if he too was taking on the standoff: “Who is insulting the nation? Who is fracturing the nation? Who leads caregivers, in our emergencies, to make dramatic ethical choices? But it is a tiny minority, launched the Prime Minister. Being a citizen also means having duties and reminding them of them is all we do. ”
Like the Prime Minister, part of the government was thus forced to justify the words of Mr. Macron all day Wednesday, by toughening the tone against the unvaccinated. At the exit of the Council of Ministers, the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, had also been questioned about the words of Emmanuel Macron. “We’re going to talk to each other frankly. Who is screwing whose life today?, he asked at midday on Wednesday. They are those who oppose the vaccine, who ruin the lives of our traders, our restaurateurs, our theaters, our cinemas, who, for two years, have lived with a sword of Damocles above their heads when they have not been closed. It is those who oppose the vaccine who ruin the lives of the elderly, who are forced to live in loneliness, in fear, in fear in the face of an epidemic. So I am going to tell you things, we have always said things extremely clearly and we will continue to say them clearly. “ The continuation of the debates in the National Assembly Wednesday evening could be just as tense.