(Paris) Marine Le Pen on Wednesday accused her far-right rival Eric Zemmour of serving as a “stepping stone” for the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse for the second round of the presidential election. He responded by describing Mme Le Pen as an eternally sure “routine candidacy” of losing every time in the second round.
Posted at 3:49 p.m.
“Does (Éric Zemmour) have the ambition to be in the second round, which I do not believe, or does it actually serve as a stepping stone to allow Valérie Pécresse to be in the second?” turn instead of Marine Le Pen? “Asked the candidate of the National Rally during interviews on television.
“If Eric Zemmour is there to help Valérie Pécresse win, then he has to admit it. Valérie Pécresse is its majority shareholder, ”added Mme Le Pen, who said on Sunday to prefer “to debate with the boss (Valérie Pécresse), rather than with the underlings” like Eric Zemmour.
“Sincerity issue”
“There is a problem of sincerity behind this candidacy” of Eric Zemmour, according to the candidate RN, in reference to remarks made by his competitor on C8 on December 16, about the 500 sponsorships necessary for a presidential candidacy.
Eric Zemmour had estimated that “if the LRs do this tactical stupidity” to prevent their elected officials from sponsoring him, “Mr.me Le Pen will be 25% and Mme Pécresse will not be in the second round ”.
Should LRs encourage sponsorship in its favor? “If they (The Republicans) were tactically smart, that’s what they would do,” added the former columnist.
Since then, Marine Le Pen has accused the LR candidate of letting LR elected officials sponsor Eric Zemmour to divide the far right.
Eric Zemmour answered sharply to Mme Le Pen Wednesday evening on BFM. “Maybe Madame Le Pen is used to this kind of political gimmicks, me, it’s not my thing,” he said.
“I don’t really have any lessons to take from Madame Le Pen. It is all the same because of her and her calamitous debate that we had five years of Emmanuel Macron. It was already because of her, because she had refused to call to vote for Nicolas Sarkozy, that we had François Hollande ”, added the candidate Reconquest!
“Our Arlette Laguiller of the national right”
“Marine Le Pen does not interest me much, it is a routine application. She was there the last time, she was there the penultimate time, she will be there the next time, ”he continued.
“I have fond thoughts for the voters of the National Rally. Are they ready to lose with Marine Le Pen in 2032? It’s a bit like our Arlette Laguiller of the national right, ”he said, in a parallel with the former candidate of the Trotskyist party Lutte Ouvrière, on the far left, who tried her luck six times in the presidential election (from 1974 to 2007), a record.
On the side of Valérie Pécresse, his communication director Geoffroy Didier said on Sunday that the LR mayors who would give their sponsorship to Eric Zemmour “would exclude themselves” from the party but that they remained “free to choose” and that “no instructions are given” by LR.