‘JD Vance was right’: French government bans top rival from politics
A French court has banned Right-wing populist leader Marine Le Pen from politics after government prosecutors requested the ban on charges of embezzlement.
Le Pen is the favored candidate to win the presidential election in 2027, and her National Rally (RN) party is the Macron administration’s top political rival. After RN handily surpassed President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance Party in the European Parliament elections in June, Macron has been working to reform political alliances to prevent Le Pen from becoming president in two years. RN remains the largest party in France’s National Assembly.
For several months, Le Pen and 24 other RN party leaders have been on trial over allegations that they paid staffers with EU funds instead of the party’s coffers, an accusation that Le Pen denies. The prosecution has asked the court to ban Le Pen and her colleagues from politics for five years — which would take her out of the 2027 presidential election — a request the court granted on Monday. The court declined to sentence Le Pen to prison, though government prosecutors had asked for two to five years.
“There are 11 million people who voted for the movement I represent. So tomorrow, potentially, millions and millions of French people would see themselves deprived of their candidate in the election,” Le Pen said ahead of her sentencing, which has drawn international outrage over what appears to be a political persecution.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini wrote on X, “Those who fear the judgment of voters often seek reassurance from the courts. In Paris, they have condemned Marine Le Pen and would like to remove her from political life. A bad situation that is also being observed in other countries such as Romania. What is happening against [Marine Le Pen] is a declaration of war from Brussels, at a time when the belligerent impulses of [European Commission President Ursula] Von der Leyen and [French President Emmanuel] Macron are terrifying. We are not intimidated, we are not stopped: full speed ahead, my friend!”
Observers also noted that Le Pen’s sentence vindicated remarks by Vice President JD Vance, who sparked backlash in February after scolding European leaders for targeting their political opponents and denying taxpayers free speech.
‘Fill up the JD Vance was right jar’
“Less than 2 months after @JDVance warned that the greatest threat to Europe was from within, leftists in France have banned Marine Le Pen from running for President despite being the leading candidate. Fill up the JD Vance was right jar!” commented activist Robby Starbuck.
Vance made the remarks at the Munich Security Conference, where he criticized European "entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.” Vance was referring to Alternative for Germany (AFD), a German Right-wing party that has gained enormous popularity countrywide but is being persecuted by the ruling Social Democratic Party. The vice president said he was not as concerned about threats to Europe’s security by Russia or China as much as he was about a "threat from within — a retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.”
The statements drew outrage from European leaders like Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, who has censored Russian literature, banned free press, and arrested political dissidents. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz also blistered at Vance’s remarks, saying that “extreme right-wing” parties must be banned for the sake of democracy.
“Germany is a very strong democracy, and as a strong democracy, we are absolutely clear that the extreme Right should be out of political control and out of political decision-making processes, and that there will be no cooperation with them,” he said, referring to his rival party AfD. "We really reject any idea of cooperation between parties, other parties and this extreme Right part[y].”
Scholz then asserted that “free speech in Europe means that you are not attacking others in ways that are against legislation and laws we have in our country.”
