Many years ago, when I still read The Washington Post, the excellent comic strip “Tank McNamara” referred to its eponymous sports announcer’s on-air flubs as a medical condition known as “Fumblemouth”. That’s what French President Emmanuel “Toy Boy” Macron seems to have in the following video, in which he utters a number of cringe-worthy sound bites.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Note: the transcript below is in three parts, because the above video is composed of what were originally three separate clips.

Video transcript #1:

00:00 So, of course, it’s not about being naive. 00:04 What is possible here is linked to a culture; 00:08 people marked by its history. And these Lutheran people 00:12 who lived [through] the transformations of recent decades 00:16 aren’t exactly the change-resisting Gallics… but still 00:24 we all have something in common: this part 00:28 of [being] European, which unites us. And I believe I can tell you here 00:32 that this Danish model is very much an inspiration for us.



Video transcript #2:

00:24 France was made up of Gallic tribes and that gives me great pride. 00:28 And I mentioned it jokingly in a speech, 00:33 which I would invite you to read or listen to one more time in its entirety. 00:37 France’s problem for the last thirty years 00:41 has been mass unemployment. 00:45 What is your unemployment level today, Christian, [asking Heinz-Christian Strache]? 00:49 Austria — 00:53 which is as much a victim as we are of detached work — 00:57 has almost half as much unemployment as we have. 01:02 France isn’t a reformable country. Many have tried and they haven’t succeeded. 01:06 Because French men and women hate reforms. Whenever they can avoid reforms they don’t do them. 01:10 They’re a people that hates that. 01:14 Perhaps French media are too much interested in communication and not enough 01:18 in the content. But I’ll talk in front of French media. 01:22 However, when I see the time spent, over the last four months, 01:26 at commenting only on my silences instead of on 01:31 what I said, I tell myself that it’s becoming a totally narcissist system. 01:35 —Breton, him as well. 01:39 They went to school together. He admitted it to us 01:43 … [unintelligible] — and voilà, excellence. 01:47 There are Bretons everywhere. It’s a… 01:51 Bretons are the French mafia.



Video transcript #3: