“My relationship is no secret, but we keep our activities very separate. From Emmanuel Macron to Marine Le Pen, Bruno Retailleau, Édouard Philippe and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, I never felt in their eyes that they saw me as ‘the wife,’” she said.
The French political class has largely stayed silent when it comes to the pair. This is, after all, a country where adultery scandals rarely cause lasting political damage. A journalist–politician partnership can seem tame by comparison.
It’s also far from the first case of its kind. Salamé’s former cohost Thomas Sotto temporarily stepped away from reporting on politics during the 2022 presidential campaign following reports he was in a relationship with Mayada Boulos, the communications chief for the prime minister at the time, Jean Castex.
In the 1990s, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé and former Economy Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn were both married to journalists. Isabelle Juppé had covered her husband’s own political party for La Croix but left journalism during her husband’s premiership. Strauss-Kahn’s wife, the prominent journalist Anne Sinclair, paused her television show on TF1 while retaining a leadership role with the channel. She then returned to reporting but avoided French political coverage until after her separation from Strauss-Kahn.
More recently, Le Monde’s Ivanne Trippenbach changed her beat from politics when her partner Rayan Nezzar became an adviser to then-Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.
Such a move by Salamé does not appear imminent. By not formally declaring his intention to run for president, Glucksmann has effectively allowed the couple to present any conflict of interest as hypothetical, at least for now.
That, of course, is only part of the story. He will be an active force in center-left politics, whatever happens in the presidential contest.
When French lawmakers return to work next month to debate Prime Minister François Bayrou’s austere budget and prepare for key municipal elections next year, Glucksmann will be working to raise the impact of his his center-left Place Publique party, just as Salamé presents the biggest stories of the day.
