“I support my daughter and it’s quite natural”, says the founder of the National Front. “Natural” maybe, but not anecdotally. Friday, barely three days ago, nothing was going well. The declarations of another member of the family, the former deputy Marion Maréchal, had unleashed a storm. She announced in Le Parisien / Today in France that she will not support her aunt in the presidential election. And that she was still thinking about joining Éric Zemmour.
First intervention of the patriarch, Friday, to offer his mediation to Marion Maréchal and Marine Le Pen. And second yesterday, to indicate that he supported his daughter for the presidential election, and to warn Marion Maréchal: support for Eric Zemmour would be “shocking”, for the founder of the Front National: “Everything should lead her to be more on the side of her aunt than a stranger.“ And everything in the sequence amazed his relatives.
Let Jean-Marie Le Pen speak this weekend: “He had to meet his daughter and granddaughter first and then make his point known, he reversed his schedule,” indicates a collaborator. Word “unknown”, used to qualify Eric Zemmour: “Given the relationship they have, to call him an unknown is curious”. Last element: summoning family solidarity. “It’s the best way to rob Marion”, explain those who know her well, recalling that the ex-elected has erased “Le Pen” from her surname.
Around the candidate of the National Rally, we are already working to trivialize a possible support from Marion Maréchal to Eric Zemmour. A relative of Marine Le Pen recalls that since she left the party, she has never called to vote FN or RN. Worse : “His quasi support for the Les Républicains list for the 2019 Europeans did nothing for François-Xavier Bellamy, who had finished at 8%”. Eepisode already revealing, it is insisted, of a “tropism for conservative candidacies”.
The same entourage also clings to the perspective thatEric Zemmour continues to unscrew in the polls, and that he is less attractive for a Marion Maréchal very tempted by a return to politics. “If she puts herself under his thumb and he screws up, she will disappear with him”, slips, almost like advice, a Marine Le Pen strategist.