Marine le Pen put in a stellar performance on 60 Minutes on Sunday.
Le pen came across as very presidential. The interview, in French but translated, is sure to boost her standing in the French presidential election on May 7.
CBS has a transcript of the interview at Marine Le Pen Says She’s Not Waging a Religious War.
Anderson Cooper: The polls say you can’t win.
Marine Le Pen (translation): Yes. They also said that Brexit wasn’t going to happen, that Donald Trump wasn’t going to be elected, wasn’t even going to be his party’s nominee. Well, they’re saying that less and less now. They are much more cautious, much more cautious now.
Anderson Cooper: So how do you explain what is happening. Did leaders go too far?
Marine Le Pen (translation): Yes. Yes. Of course they’ve gone too far. Globalization has become an ideology with no constraints. And now, nations are forcing themselves back into the debate. Nations with borders we control, with people that we listen to, with real economies, not Wall Street economies, but rather factories and farmers. And this goes against this unregulated globalization, wild, savage globalization.
Anderson Cooper: Savage globalization?
Marine Le Pen (translation): Yes, Savage of course. Wild globalization has benefited some, but it’s been a catastrophe for most.
A catastrophe, she says, which has ravaged the French economy, as jobs have faded away and immigrants have flooded in, many of them Muslim immigrants, from North Africa who Le Pen says are draining resources, rejecting French values and transforming the culture.
Anderson Cooper: One of the concerns of many of your supporters is that immigration, current immigration is changing the character of France. It’s changing the spirit of the country?
Marine Le Pen (translation): It’s because of this massive immigration and more in some places, (that) France’s image has undeniably changed. There are a number of neighborhoods where you are no longer living a French life. That’s undeniable.
Anderson Cooper: Should Muslim people be allowed to wear headscarves?
Marine Le Pen (translation): No. I’m opposed to wearing headscarves in public places. That’s not France. There’s something I just don’t understand: the people who come to France, why would they want to change France, to live in France the same way they lived back home?
Anderson Cooper: Would a Sikh person allowed to be (SIC) wear a turban?
Marine Le Pen (translation): No, not in public. We don’t have a lot of Sikhs in France. We’ve got some. But we don’t really hear much from them or about them. Which is good news.
Anderson Cooper: There are many people in France who view your party as anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim?
Marine Le Pen (translation): I’m not waging a religious war. It’s clear that in France, everyone has the right to practice their religion, to worship as they choose. My war is against Islamic fundamentalism.
Anderson Cooper: There’s a lot of fear among some immigrants about
the idea of you becoming president.
Marine Le Pen (translation): I think a lot of people are trying to scare them. But in reality, they have nothing to fear. You know, people who behave need not worry. Foreigners in France who hold a job, who respect our laws, our codes, have absolutely nothing to worry about.
In a country with 10 percent unemployment, twice what it is in the U.S., Le Pen has built a stronghold in the Northern rustbelt, where factories have closed and jobs have disappeared.
While she may be a candidate of the far right, some of her policies come straight out of the playbook of the French left. She promises more government benefits and greater worker protections.
Anderson Cooper: When Donald Trump says, “Make America great again,” are you saying, “Make France great again?”
Marine Le Pen (translation): Yes, of course. I’ve been saying that for many years. We are a great nation, which has lot to offer to the world, but to offer something to the world France has to remain France.
She calls for a radical shift in the country’s foreign policy, vowing to renegotiate its membership in the European Union, or else leave altogether. A move that could result in the breakup of the EU. And just like President Trump, she’s questioned the role of NATO, and advocates closer ties with Russia.
Anderson Cooper: What is your admiration for Russia, for Vladimir Putin?
Marine Le Pen (translation): Look. I’m not a fan in a rock concert, you see. I am a political leader in a great nation of the world. What interests me are France’s interests.
Anderson Cooper: You don’t believe Russia’s a threat for Europe?
Marine Le Pen (translation): I don’t believe that at all. I think that’s a big scam.
Anderson Cooper: Invasion in Ukraine–
Anderson Cooper: Invasion of Crimea?
Marine Le Pen (translation): I’ll tell you what the danger is for Europe. It’s carrying out a cold war against Russia and pushing Russia into China’s arms. That’s the threat to Europe.
Anderson Cooper: You don’t think Vladimir Putin, though, is a killer, is a– is a– a threat to France, to others in this region?
Marine Le Pen (translation): No, I don’t believe it is so. Nothing Vladimir Putin has done would make me reach that conclusion.
Her views on Russia and Vladimir Putin have drawn scrutiny, particularly because three years ago, a Russian bank loaned her more than $11 million to fund her party.
Anderson Cooper: Your critics will say that that influences you in your opinion of Russia.
Marine Le Pen (translation): Why would it influence me? When you take out a loan, what’s your obligation other than paying it back? You have no other obligation. But if you know an American bank that wants to lend me money, by all means because I’m still looking for funds. Particularly since French banks, for political reasons, have refused to give us a loan to allow us to campaign.
That Russian loan and a widening probe into her party’s finances have not quieted the frenzy that now follows Marine Le Pen everywhere. With less than two months to go before the first votes are cast, she and her party are closer to power than ever.
Marine Le Pen: Vive les peuples, Vive la Republique! Vive la France!
Mish Comments
Wow. Unlike Trump in the presidential debates, Le Pen did not fumble the ball once.
That does not mean you have to agree with her on every point. I don’t. Rather, it means she made no gaffs.
I strongly disagree with le Pen (and Trump) on globalization. But my opinion does not count.
Trump appealed to displaced blue collar workers and others who thought the pendulum swung too far in one direction.
Le Pen appeals to the same class of individuals. And unlike Trump, le Pen stayed with the message without making any policy mistakes, contradictions, silly statements, or sexist statements.
She also did well to purge her father from the party.
Fillon Implodes
The latest French Polls show support for Republican candidate Francois Fillon has plunged.
Alain Juppé was knocked out of the Republican primary by Fillon, in a landslide.
However, some French pollsters now measure support for Juppé because Fillon promised to step aside if he came under formal proceedings for “Penelopegate”, paying his wife Penelope and his kids over €800,000 for doing nothing. The money came from parliamentary funds, fraudulently.
The formal investigation began, but François Fillon declares he has no intention of standing down.
That proves, among other things, Fillon is a liar. And his support has deservedly plunged.
With the Republican party splintering, and in light of a superb 60 Minute interview, le Pen has a great chance of becoming France’s next president.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Unfortunately, the left and the republicans will unite against Le Pen in the second round and France will – therefore – elect Macron.
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That is the alleged script
The same script said Brexit would not happen and Tump would not win the nomination, let alone the presidency.
Le Pen is a far more polished speaker than Trump
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except brexit and trump-clinton polls were all within a margin of error, while in France it’s 20 pts in second round. Europe/France is ageing, what pensioner wants to go through currency redenomination or greece-like experience?
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It is not 20 points in the second round
Check again.
Moreover Le Pen’s backers show the least tendency to be willing to switch
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i am not sure which polls you are looking at, but there’s a summary for the 2nd round here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_French_presidential_election,_2017
for example, today’s IFOP, Macron 61% to MLP 39%.
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We are moving from the Age of Falsehood to the Age of Righteousness. The Elites, New World Order – call them what you want – their writ will not run for much longer.
There is a plan to what people call madness. The rise of the alt-right, including here India, is not surprising. One of the reasons for this is the fear for the future.
Let us be honest – the problems the world is facing – economy, climate change, supremacists, fundamentalism – is beyond the solution of any leader we have on the horizon or in power.
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The people clinging to these demagogues for a solution are those who will suffer the worst of their deceptions. Of course they’ll simply blame it all on their favoured scapegoats, again, as usual.
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I have no opinion either way on dress, or religious dress. If one country says you must dress a certain way, another says not a different way, and another is not concerned, that is fine by me – you respect the custom or law of the nation you are in. Even in our own countries we are just visitors, these rules are part of social and religious culture, something I give 9/10 as positive whatever it is. It is like trying to blame a zebra for its stripes or a lion for its teeth. So the righteousness is hopefully a return to ‘ I am that I am ‘ at a national and ‘please accept that, let us acknowledge our difference and concentrate on what we have in common’. If we cannot celebrate diversity, where even a monoculture is allowed its space to flourish or fail by its own accord, then we are really in a world of global dictatorship and much the less for it.
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Iceland in 16 Days: Day 13, Snæfellsnes Peninsula, Kirkjufell Mountain
https://mishmoments.com/2017/03/06/iceland-in-16-days-day-13/
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Mish….Until the Average ‘World Citizen and Worker’ can Also make a Profit from Globalization..the Populist ‘Tidal wave’ of Political unrest and Social upheaval cocooned around the World Economy and Its Financial Structure..will day by day merely Increase in Volume..Until a form of Economic Equilibrium is Achieved…
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Fillon is pro-business. Le Pen is socialist. Very big difference there. If you could take LePen’s anti-EU stance and merge it with Fillon’s pro-business/capitalism, it would be perfect.
Le Pen and Fillon are both under investigation for criminal acts, and are even in that category. Only top candidates merit politically-motivated criminal investigations, like Trump and Clinton in USA. All this investigation stuff is bogus. Trump has relatives on the White House payroll, and they actually do their jobs. USA Senate Majority Leader McConnell’s wife has a cushy cabinet job in the White House, and no one complains. Fillon is being slandered, because they want a socialist not a capitalist. If Le Pen came out in favor of an EU army and doubling the size of NATO, the investigations against her would be dropped. Similarly, Fillon’s investigation would disappear in an instant if he converted to socialism and disavowed his pro-business stance. To think otherwise about election campaign shenanigans is pure undiluted delusion.
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I’ll posit the theory here that MLP is less socialist in practice than she advertises. A socialist Le Pen is marginally acceptable in the French political spectrum. If she were otherwise (a capitalist for instance), she wouldn’t hold enough of the middle to be electorally viable.
Once in power, I would fully expect a Pres. Le Pen to be less socialist in governance than she is during an election campaign. Socialism isn’t entirely consistent with MLP’s personal philosophy, imo, so something would have to give way. Given FR’s problems in context, MLP won’t need any excuses to step away from socialism’s many, many failures.
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Huge difference between formal charges against Fillon and complete nonsense against le Pen. Fillon is guilty of paying his wife 800,000 euros for doing nothing.
Le pen – no charges – is allegedly guilty of paying her staff for non-EU work, a charge she disputes.
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The much vaunted and utterly useless Farage got away with it, paying his German ‘wife’ for a fictitious job she probably never did.
Of course concepts of hypocrisy and duplicity are too difficult to grasp for the binary flag waving cretins who empower these divisive, self serving, solution free demagogues infecting Western politics.
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You seem to know a lot about hypocrisy and duplicity, and yet you expect the cretins to mark in binary for you alone in a booth at the ballot.
Maybe you should move to Crete?
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I don’t need to move anywhere, I’ll sit back with a cool beer, count my beans and watch the car crash as it unfolds. The smug satisfaction will be ample recompense for the damage.
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Georgie, why you using an alias here?
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I’m thinking more along the lines of a worldwide demolition derby.
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CIA meddling in 2012 French presidential elections revealed (by WikiLeaks)
http://njtoday.net/2017/03/06/cia-meddling-2012-french-presidential-elections-revealed/
Wikileaks released three classified “tasking orders” from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that detail a seven-month long spying campaign and covert actions taken by the agency in France prior to the 2012 French presidential election…“All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA’s human (“HUMINT”) and electronic (“SIGINT”) spies in the seven months leading up to France’s 2012 presidential election,” said the Feb. 16, 2017 Wikileaks statement. The revelations named the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and specifically targeted President Francois Hollande, then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, along with presidential candidates Marine Le Pen, Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Kahn…News that the CIA interferes in foreign elections is not altogether surprising, given that the American spy agency has intervened covertly and directly in foreign elections more than 80 times since 1946. However, the news comes at an interesting time for France…
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Obama would of never allowed such a thing! (sarcasm)
Because it would be to much like Russia meddling in American politics.
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Which French TV channel carries 60 Minutes?
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Soixante Minutes
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They’re a little slower over here, so it would be Soixante-neuf Minutes.
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I hope she wins. In politics you can never say for sure. France and Italy have the capacity to debunk Draghi’s all it takes and it will be enough story. Time the story’s endgame is played out.
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Italy is a lost cause … One might reasonably expect its exit, but they have become too addicted to the heroin of easy EU subsidy money, moreso than France.
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Sounds like she tells the truth. Didn’t dodge any awkward questions. Was open about the loan, didn’t try to hide and gave a perfectly reasonable explanation.
It reads like there is some authenticity there, sadly lacking in many others.
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Who would have thought that being mundane would be politically viable?
Who would have considered that the view of one’s own country as a sanctuary would need representation to establish?
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Part of the appeal of these politicians is that there seems to be an honesty openness or candidness with both mannerism and speech to other people. They talk frankly about their points of view and what they wish to achieve. It isn’t wordplay to smooth talk the pop into a vote. This is very much what citizens NEED to hear if we are ever going to regain trust in elected leaders. It isn’t always pretty discussions, but isn’t that needed? Professional politicians are nothing but sparkly zirconium in a brass ring at a time when we desperately want to find a gem in the rough.
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Not sure I agree. Change a few words around and i could see her banning Jews from wearing a Yarmulke in public.
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And most certainly, banning people of any creed from open carrying. Which, given a bit of time, amounts to essentially the same thing.
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“That proves, among other things, Fillon is a liar. And his support has deservedly plunged.”
Nope, that proves he is a politician, what we already knew, and that most conservatives can’t take the weakest hit without changing side, what we already knew too.
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Another politician with Russian connections. These Russisns are like Goldman – you can’t get away from them
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Some cannot handle their own obsessions.
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Unfortunately, it does look like the witch does have a good chance of winning. I was listening to supporters of Fillon yesterday and a common thread between their comments is that they wanted change. Macron is all about the status quo, so if Le Pen and Macron come head to head it’s not unreasonable to suspect the supports of Fillon to support Le Pen.
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If the Russians call their loan Le Pen is in trouble. The loan is an issue.
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Would that not be true of any loan? If so, why would it matter that it came from a Russian bank? I find this revival of cold war mentality both amusing and dismaying. I’m also old enough to remember the air raid drills we used to have in school in the ’60’s. (Even as a kid, never made sense. 2 miles from mid-town Manhattan, a nuke attack would leave me dust, and I knew it.)
The entire Crimean issue leaves me bemused as well. Russia was not giving up their Black Sea naval base. When the Duma decided to withdraw the lease, it was over; period. If Western leaders thought Russia would just roll over they weren’t thinking clearly at all. Which, I suppose, really shouldn’t surprise me.
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This is just another sign of a growing “stop globalization” movement that has gained support in developed countries across the world. The subject of globalization is made up of many threads interwoven in a complex way, the discussion can include several issues such as, but not limited to, immigration and free trade.
Other social concerns also feed into the mix, things like global warming, nationalism, inequality, even population growth. The article below explores this complex issue and questions whether it is justified.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2016/07/is-stop-globalization-movement-justified.html
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Globalization is a spawn of government, a step towards worldwide corporatocracy.
Ever larger aggregations in a top down chain of command hierarchy. The logical and disastrous culmination of thousands of years of government.
Thanks all you government lovers.
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As opposed to what? Populist nationalist fervour, where CEOs become presidents and appoint other CEOs and looney tune cronies to do their bidding.
The US is rapidly sinking into a form of outright fascism, already a bread and circuses police state in all but name since the orchestrated attack in 2001.
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I’ll take borderline-anarchy populism over corporate-sponsored globalization EVERY DAY & TWICE IN SUNDAY.
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Globalisation is a spawn of corporate greed and exploitation, governments do as they’re told for the most part by the US based global financial oligopoly.
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She seems to be doing the right things, including excising the anti-Semitic faction from her party. As with Trump, it is possible to propose the right things, and be embraced by folks for the wrong reasons , as well as by a majority for the right reasons. The reported degree of dilution of France was shocking.
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How about excising the pro-semitic faction also and become semitic-neutral?
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Semitic neutral just won’t cut it for the perfidious Zionists, they need conflict.. Islamophobia, terrorism and their ever lucrative status as eternal victims.
What we need however is to cut the abomination, the criminal cult running it and the assimilated colonial imposters they exploit loose.
Almost all the problems emanating from the M.E. are a result of the fake israelite imposters and the murderous criminal cult’s machinations on stolen land, alongside it’s fifth column infecting Western politics and directing foreign policy in the region for the last 100 years or so.
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THE Anderson Cooper?
….
Cooper: “Who’s Tony Romo?”
Griffin: “Oh boy … this is gonna be good.”
Cooper: “Tony Romo, like the rib restaurant?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/01/01/anderson-cooper-has-no-idea-who-tony-romo-is/?utm_term=.3f28eb11b522
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Marine Le Pen future Presidente de la France ( Inevitable)
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“Anderson Cooper: You don’t think Vladimir Putin, though, is a killer, is a– is a– a threat to France, to others in this region?”
Cooper was stuttering.
Cooper moderated one of the Presidential debates. During that debate, Trump declared that it was 3 on 1. Trump was correct.
In this line of questioning, Le Pen called out Cooper’s propaganda. Cooper stumbled over his words.
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“Anderson Cooper: One of the concerns of many of your supporters is that immigration, current immigration is changing the character of France. It’s changing the spirit of the country?”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-05/frances-death-spiral
Several weeks ago, the top security guy said that France was on the verge of civil war and one more terrorist attack could cause it. The link is a story posted just today.
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If not for Russia and America during WWII, Germany would have dominated Europe indefinitely. The same mindset will allow the current destruction of culture to continue until European culture is destroyed. Europeans don’t have the stomach for hard line actions. By the time they reach that point, it will be too late and sharia law will be the law of the land at worst, at best it will be Erdogan style governing.
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It’s very likely that had the US stayed out of WWI, WWII wouldn’t have happened.
How many tens of millions of Euro-Peons died in WWII?
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Indeed, the conditions imposed ensured WW2.
The murderous Zionist cult’s burning desire to steal others land and resources was as always lurking in the shadows.
The US were delivered to the allies in the Great War in exchange for a path being laid towards invention of the abomination. From which a great many Western problems, internationally, have since emanated.
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Although it sounds sexist, nations are typically heading into or in a bear market when women make corporate and political gains. LePen would be one of three female leaders of a major European country. That tells me the European economy is heading into another deep recession or outright depression. The root cause is not what women leaders have done or said, but rather how negative social mood expresses itself as a hidden force.
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The odds she wins are low unfortunately.
You have to understand she is tagged as fascist, although she is after all quite open minded since she is outspoken and talks about all subjects.
Recent foreign people who have become French are so numerous that it is a heavy handicap to start with(think of former colonies in North Africa)
I hope not her winning elections but having an open debate on France’s real issues like immigration and impact of Islam on our daily lives (food forced change, female dressing code, Friday prayer work …)
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Question foreign policy, start and end there. That explains all but the most trivial of the problems facing the West.
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According to CNN, Russia invaded ukraine? Ah, thank heavens for CNN, they always get their facts straight.
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I work with French Nationals and they are blind to Islam and the nation of france. Blind as a bat. They all talk about how to freeze LePen out and they will likely succeed but LePen will not be going away. Guess what, the muslims and the Islamic terrorists, and the nogo zones, and the riots, and the migrants and the atrocities they are committing will not stop. Whatever French coalition forms it will be fragile, just like the Netherlands, and LePen will keep growing and keep winning because there is a large segment of France that is not protected from Islam like the professional class that I work with…and those French went Islam out of France. The problem with LePen will then be her economic socialist model where she would do better to borrow from Trump: privatize the economy, strip criminals of citizenship and deport them, deny social benefits to criminals and migrants, re-invest in France.
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