Éric Zemmour is at the center of a new controversy, the far-right presidential candidate being accused of having let the crowd chant “Macron assassin” during his rally on Sunday in Paris, which he ended up “condemning” , according to those around him.
The slogan was chanted a dozen times on the Trocadero esplanade, which faces the Eiffel Tower, where tens of thousands of people had come to support it.
The ex-polemicist had just mentioned three famous criminal cases in France, two anti-Semitic murders and a jihadist attack, in which the victims have in recent years been killed by Muslims, French or foreigners.
“Some are indignant at my firmness. What makes me indignant are not the words and the concepts, it is the daily dramas that you undergo. […] We will never do justice to all those whom the State has failed to protect, ”he said, before taking a break, during which the cries rose, without his intervention.
“He didn’t hear it” and “he condemns what the crowd said at the time”. “He does not take up the expression on his own account. He never used such a term and never implied it in his speech, ”said his entourage, questioned several times about this episode.
“E. Zemmour lets a crowd shout “Macron assassin”. I strongly fight the outgoing president but letting an opponent be treated as a murderer is dangerous for the Republic, ”the Republican candidate Valérie Pécresse had previously tweeted.
“It is a shame for democracy and the Republic to hear such remarks”, had abounded the president of the conservative deputies Damien Abad about the slogan heard.
In the presidential majority, the president of Emmanuel Macron’s party in the National Assembly, Christophe Castaner, described as “irresponsible” the attitude of the candidate, who “let it go”. Éric Zemmour “demonstrated his presidential impediment this afternoon”, he added.