Are you sure about that, Mr. President?
Was French president Nicolas Sarkozy lying when he said he was there when the Berlin wall came down 20 years ago? Major media outlets in Paris say he might have been. On Sunday, in a post on his Facebook page, Sarkozy recounted his memories from that fateful day in 1989: “On the morning of Nov. 9, we looked into the news from Berlin, which indicated that change was afoot in Germany’s divided capital. We decided to leave Paris with Alain Juppé [then secretary general of Sarkozy’s political party] and take part in the event that was shaping up. […] Later, we went to Checkpoint Charlie to go to the eastern side of the city and confront this wall, on which we were able to land a few blows with a pickax.” Sounds moving, doesn’t it? Except, there’s a problem. French newspaper Le Figaro points out that on that Nov. 9, Juppé was in fact in France at a ceremony honoring Charles de Gualle. The next day, he appeared on French television and made no mention of having visited Berlin.