The French presidency has dismissed as ‘fake news’ a viral conspiracy theory falsely claiming that President Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders were seen taking drugs on a train.<\/p>\n
The Elys\u00e9e Palace has hit back against “fake news” spread by “France’s enemies” after social media accounts belonging to far-right figures and Russian officials falsely claimed that European leaders, including President Emmanuel Macron, were seen taking drugs on a train.<\/p>\n
The baseless accusation made waves on X, originally stirred up by US radio host and conspiracy theorist<\/a> Alex Jones, before being picked up by Russian officials such as foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.<\/p>\n The alleged incident involved genuine footage showing Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz having a meeting in a train compartment on their way to Kyiv<\/a> for talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday.<\/p>\n As Merz and Starmer entered the compartment, Macron was seen moving a white tissue from the table.<\/p>\n Social media accounts then claimed, without a shred of evidence, that the white object contained cocaine.<\/p>\n France blames bed bug panic on Russian ‘disinformation’<\/a><\/p>\n “When European unity becomes inconvenient, disinformation can be so desperate as to make a simple tissue look like drugs,” declared the Elys\u00e9e on Monday in a statement on its own X account.<\/p>\n Read more on RFI English<\/a><\/p>\n Read also:
Macron, Starmer join forces to tackle Musk ‘interference’ in European affairs<\/a>
Two women guilty of false transgender claims against France’s first lady<\/a>
France strengthens support for Moldova as Russian destabilisation efforts persist<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The French presidency has dismissed as ‘fake news’ a viral conspiracy theory falsely claiming that President Emmanuel Macron…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[45606,44456,34,2000,299,14165,36,1945,807,45603,45605,45604],"class_list":{"0":"post-98023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-conspiracy-theory","9":"tag-elysee-palace","10":"tag-emmanuel-macron","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-european-leaders","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-friedrich-merz","16":"tag-keir-starmer","17":"tag-russian-officials","18":"tag-social-media-accounts","19":"tag-train-compartment"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114500520036025376","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}