(AFP) – US President Donald Trump on Tuesday hailed Marine Le Pen as France’s “conservative voice” following widespread riots, but stopped short of endorsing the far-right presidential frontrunner in next year’s French election. Trump’s comments come after he repeatedly used the protests roiling France to score political points at home on immigration and the left-wing ahead of tight US midterm elections next month.
“Well, I don’t know her, I haven’t met her, but I thought she was badly treated. It would look like a weaponization to me,” Trump said in the Oval Office when an AFP reporter asked if he would endorse Le Pen. Le Pen, 58, was convicted of graft by a French court in March 2025. She was initially banned from politics for five years but an appeals court this year paved the way for her to run in the 2027 election to succeed President Emmanuel Macron.
Trump has himself complained of the alleged weaponization of the American justice system after he became the first US president to be a convicted criminal, in a hush-money case involving an adult actress. “It would look to me like, you know, she was leading. But after this (the riots), she’s definitely — she’s the conservative voice,” Trump said.
The 80-year-old US leader also referred to his successful endorsements of several right-wing figures in recent South American elections. Trump pressed on with his administration’s narrative on the French riots, which it has largely blamed on mass immigration. “That wasn’t a little bit of a riot, that wasn’t a little bit of a protest, that was a full on revolution, and it continues,” Trump said.
Trump launched into a lengthy tirade about France at a midterms rally Monday in Kansas, saying it was being “conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and communists.”
© 2024 AFP
