French President Emmanuel Macron has broken his silence to say he alone will take the blame for his violent bodyguard, but he also launched a Trump-like attack on the media for its coverage of the scandal.

He also sought to jokingly dispel rumours that his 26-year-old former bodyguard Alexandre Benalla was his lover or had been given the codes to France’s nuclear arsenal.

“If they are looking for the person responsible, the only one responsible is me and me alone,” Mr Macron told MPs from his majority Republic on the Move (LREM) party late on Tuesday.

The scandal over Mr Benalla, who was sacked last Friday after videos emerged of him beating a young protester and manhandling another during a May Day protest in Paris, has sent the president’s poll ratings to record lows.

Opposition MPs have accused the government of a cover-up and have paralysed parliamentary debate while also launching ongoing investigative committees that have questioned the interior minister, the Paris police chief, and a host of other top Elysée and security officials.

"What happened on May 1 is terrible, serious, and for me it was a disappointment and a betrayal," Mr Macron said in his 30-minute speech to his MPs, who he told he was “shocked” by the behaviour of Mr Benalla, whom he had mistakenly trusted.

The  Élysée Palace knew of the assault in May, but Mr Benalla was only sacked and taken into police custody last week, two days after the scandal became public knowledge when Le Monde newspaper published the video, more than two months after the incident. In May, Mr Benalla was suspended for two weeks and demoted. 

Mr Macron also attacked the French media, saying, in comments that echo US President Donald Trump’s frequent accusations of “fake news”, that it was not trying to find the truth but instead publishing “rubbish.”

“We have a press that no longer seeks truth,” he said.  “(The media) says look! Looped images of a scene (of Mr Benalla’s violence), which is unacceptable and which I condemn. But I would like to see the scene before, the scene after, the context, what happened,” he said.

“Are (the images) shown with the desire to seek the truth and to present facts in a balanced manner?” he said, before answering that he believed they were not.

The 40-year-old president had begun his speech with a joke about the various rumours that have swirled around social media about his former bodyguard, who was his chief of security during his 2017 election campaign.

“Alexandre Benalla has never had the nuclear codes… Alexandre Benalla is not my lover,” he said, to laughter from his MPs.

His remarks have done little to calm the opposition, who have called on the president to explain himself to the French public or to appear before a parliamentary committee to be questioned.

Éric Ciotti of Les Républicains party sarcastically tweeted that Mr Macron “prefers to explain himself to his own little caste rather than give explanations the French are waiting for.”