Carla Bruni-Sarkozi did pre-marriage claim to being "easily bored by monogamy"

France' s President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to "smash the face" of
a political editor during a 40-minute conversation after his magazine suggested
Carla Bruni was a man-eater, a new biography discloses. The French president's
threat was provoked by an article in Le Point news magazine offering "24
tips to the President ahead of his marriage to Mademoiselle Bruni".
One piece of advice was: "Do not introduce your new wife to your sons,
Barack Obama or any handsome men." In a new book called M. Le President,
Franz-Olivier Giesbert, the director of Le Point, gives a blow by blow account
of the president's tirade following the article.
Sarkozy allegedly called shortly after publication in January, 2008, started
with a few niceties before suddenly turning apoplectic. "This article is
filth and I should smash your face in," he reportedly told Giesbert.
Giesbert replied: "Are you threatening me?"
Sarkozy hit back: "You deserve it. I don't know what's holding me back."
"There's no reason for you and Carla to feel insulted," replied the
author.
"I'm sure you'd blow your top if I wrote that your wife was a whore that
everyone had slept with and even wanted to have sex with your children,"
the president went on.
"Never did our magazine suggest Carla was a whore," said Giesbert.
Bruni-Sarkozy, 43, earned a reputation for promiscuity because of her string
of celebrity lovers including Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump before
marrying Mr Sarkozy more than two years ago. Her pre-marriage claim to being
"easily bored by monogamy" has become a notorious quote.
She also went out with a well-known philosopher before dropping him for his
son, Raphael Enthoven, with whom she has a son.
Sarkozy insisted that the magazine issue a written apology, which was denied.
"You'll see what I'm going to do to you," he threatened.
Giesbert said the president subsequently sought to pressure Le Point's owner,
the luxury goods billionaire Francois Pinault, into firing Giesbert, to no avail.
Giesbert said it was Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy who defused the situation by taking
the phone and saying: "He only flew off the handle because he loves me
so much."
Giesbert, 62, said he has been subjected several times to such tirades with
"schoolboy vocabulary."
The author is renowned for writing biting but accurate biographies of French
presidents from the late Socialist Francois Mitterrand - in which he revealed
his shady links to the collaborationist Vichy regime — and Jacques Chirac.
The biography of Sarkozy's predecessor, The Tragedy of The President, was a
bestseller and portrayed Chirac as a sex-obsessed "ogre" who "gulps
down everything" but "retains nothing, not even friends".
Sarkozy is equally pilloried as a "child king" who is "drunk
on himself", "immature" and a "weathervane" who is
"tyrannical" with his entourage and above all his friends.
However, Giesbert counters the widely held view that Sarkozy is a philistine.
During a recent encounter, the president impressed him by quoting at length
from a host of authors from Racine to Maupassant.
So the author, who is very well read, tried to trip him up by talking about
John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and its main protagonist, whose surname, he
said, was Jed.
"No, Joad," hit back Sarkozy.
"If he had mugged up on a few cheat cards the day before, I would have
rumbled him," he said.
He believes Sarkozy's artistic wife had a hand, but admits: "He is anything
but uncultured."