Francois Hollande Suffering from Serious Family Twitter Drama
When Nicolas Sarkozy left office, most thought French politics would become way less interesting without him and his beautiful wife, Carla Bruni. The Hollande family are proving to be quite capable of filling the hole with some serious family Twitter drama, though.
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First, a primer on the players. François Hollande is the newly elected President of France, and his current partner's name is Valérie Trierweiler. Hollande has a son named Thomas, a lawyer, from a previous partnership with Ségolène Royal. It should be noted that Royal was running for a position in the French legislature.
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It all started when Trierweiler tweeted public support for the opponent of Royal in a French legislative race, after her husband had already endorsed Royal. This infuriated Thomas, who told French weekly Le Point the tweet "stupified" his father. "I really felt for my father, he hates his private life being brought out into the open. It destroyed the normal image he had built up," Hollande apparently told Le Point.
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But now, probably to try and weather a storm from his dad, he's claiming he was misquoted by Le Point. Speaking with AFP, Hollande denied everything. "I deny having agreed to an interview with Le Point. What they reported me as saying, some of which was distorted or taken out of context, was said during an informal conversation" with the journalist.
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But now she's speaking out, too. The New York Times interviewed Charlotte Chaffanjon. She says she knows Thomas Hollande quite well "professionally." The two met on his father's campaign trail and they've had lunch multiple times. "He knew exactly what he was doing," she told the Times, "he was very sincere." But there is some room for conspiracy theorists. When asked by the Times how diligently she recored Hollande's words, Chaffanjon quickly rebuffed them. "I don’t wish to talk about the making of the interview," she said. She credited Hollande's behavior to being "torn between his attraction to politics and the media world, and the fact that it is difficult for him to express himself, being the son of a president." Don't worry, Hollande family. Family dinners are always awkward. It's not just you.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story said the youngest Hollande was seeing Royal, when in fact she is his mother. We're sorry for the mix up.
