“It’s the primary of the far right”, Valérie Pécresse, the LR candidate, often repeats about the remote match between Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour in the 2022 presidential race. She had gotten into the habit of positioning herself above the fray, preferring to focus her criticisms on the outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron. But for the past few days, the candidate Les Républicains has been sliding more and more attacks towards those who want to overtake her from the right for qualification in the second round. It went up a notch again on Friday evening February 4 during a public meeting in Charleville-Mézières.
We knew his formula targeting Emmanuel Macron, a president who “burn the cash register”. Here is Valérie Pécresse’s portrait of Marine Le Pen. “She bankrupted her party, and now she is about to bankrupt her country. She is proposing retirement at 60, expenses and expenses, not a single saving. would be tempted by a fit of anger, by a fit of despair: do not vote for her, she is not capable of leading France.”
A message launched in Charleville-Mézières, in the Ardennes, a department which put the RN candidate at the head of the first round five years ago. These voters, this time, may well turn to another candidate. “Eric Zemmour? It’s black and white TV!” laughs Valérie Pécresse. It develops a new angle of attack. “Mr. Zemmour talks to us about the fight against Islamism. But at the same time, his friend is called Tariq Ramadan. a series of rapes. But it seems, according to Eric Zemmour, that he is the victim of a cabal.”
Words that are in fact a counter-attack. Because in recent days, relatives of Valérie Pécresse have themselves been victims of rumors about supposed links with Islamists, rumors relayed on social networks by supporters of Eric Zemmour. “I have made the fight against Islamism the red thread of my action since I became president of the Ile-de-France region”, defends Valérie Pécresse, condemning a “new totalitarianism of the 21st century” because “the Islamists have decided to destroy us”. Before returning to Eric Zemmour: “We choose de Gaulle, he chooses Pétain.”