Sarkozy to Editor: I Could Smash Your Face

Rarely one to hold his tongue, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has now been accused of a real doozie of a verbal assault—aimed at a journalist. He threatened to "smash" the face of an editor who called Sarkozy's then-future First Lady Carla Bruni a "man eater." The revelation is in a new biography by the head of the French magazine Le Point, who slams Sarkozy as a "tyrannical child-king." This article is" filth and I should smash your face in,” the president told Franz-Olivier Giesbert in a phone call to complain about a piece. Giesbert asked: “Are you threatening me?” Sarkozy shot back: “You deserve it. I don’t know what’s holding me back.”

Bruni, who once said monogamy "bored" her, had a string of celebrity lovers before her marriage to Sarkozy, including Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump. Sarkozy was livid after Le Point suggested that the president not introduce Bruni to his "sons, Barack Obama or any handsome" men. “I’m sure you’d blow your top if I wrote that your wife was a whore and even wanted to have sex with your children,” Sarkozy told the editor. Giesbert responded: "Never did our magazine suggest Carla was a whore." Carla herself finally wrested the phone from Sarkozy, saying to Giesbert: "Forgive him. Nicolas is so in love. He cannot bear that people write this kind of thing about me," reports the Telegraph.