“If you had Madame Macron in front of you, would you have told her about his cock?”
On the witness stand, Jérôme A. was silent. Perhaps he “wouldn’t have made jokes in front of” Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, if she had been standing right before him. But “it all depends on the context and the moment,” he stammered.
The 49-year-old IT specialist was among the 10 defendants, aged between 41 and 65, for whom prosecutors requested suspended prison sentences, ranging from 3 to 12 months, after they were charged and tried for cyberstalking the first lady. In the Paris criminal court on Monday and Tuesday, they were accused of having published or relayed on social networks jokes, insults, photomontages, and other caricatures claiming that Brigitte Macron was a man. Ahead of the verdict, expected on January 5, 2026, most of them pleaded that they had a right to humor, satire, and impertinence, while others outright evoked the “Charlie Hebdo spirit.”
The defendants’ tweets compared Macron to an “old tranny” and “a first lady boy” “who wears size 47 shoes.” Jérôme A., for his part, wrote: “An ultra minority of weirdos have taken power in Paris. Who doubts Brigitte’s cock?”
When confronted on the stand with tweets that he considered harmless, the defendant tried to play down the significance of his comments. Since 2022, he has published more than 36,000 tweets in total, an average of 30 per day; not all have been about Macron. “I’m accused of nine tweets spaced over four months,” he pointed out, as if surprised to find himself in court for so little. Why, in the flood of vulgar, insulting comments on the internet, did the law take an interest in him? “I wonder what I’m doing here,” he complained. “Today, you can send people to police custody for a few harmless tweets, end up in cells that smell of piss, be summoned for several days in Paris. It’s frightening.”
Most of the defendants are internet users without outsize influence who don’t see the point of this cyberstalking trial. “Madame Macron has a certain notoriety,” recalled Jean-Christophe P., a 65-year-old property manager. “I’m just one person among many. I don’t think I’m part of any harassment.” He called the first lady a “degenerate pedo-satanist slut” and a “shitty tranny.”
They were shameful remarks when quoted by the presiding judge. But for Jean-Luc M., they were merely “jokes” or “quips.”
Hugo Wintrebert
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