Marine Le Pen might not be a household name in the U.S., but over in Europe, she is one of the continent’s best-known bigots. She became the leader of the French Front National Party in 2011, shortly after he father Jean-Marie Le Pen announced his plans to retire.
Last year Jean-Marie was once again fined for repeating his long-standing anti-Semitic slur that the Nazi gas chambers were:
“… Just a detail in the history of World War II.”
Holocaust denial is a criminal offense in both Germany and France.
A successful bid by Marine to modernize the party allowed it to win 200 seats in the 2016 local election, 100 times what they achieved back in 2011. Today with the French presidential election now only a few months away, her party is sitting at 26.5 percent in the polls; in a country with several competing parties, that makes her by far the front runner.
Her diatribe is shocking at times.
She persistently defended her father’s anti-Semitic comments – for which he has been convicted no fewer than six times – then expelled him from the party in 2015. She also correctly identified the obvious parallels between Brexit and Trump’s November electoral win describing them both as stones:
“… In the building of a new world destined to replace the old one.”
Of more immediate concerns to most Americans, however, are her close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Another Stone In The Wall
Putin’s interference in the U.S. election is now a matter of public record. His obvious delight at the surprise Brexit was taken from the same geopolitical playbook, as was his decision to help fund Le Pen’s political ambitions.
Her hard-right nationalistic ideology will help to weaken the EU project before it even has time to recover from the mauling it received via the U.K.’s decision to leave. This, coupled with the imposition of a puppet president in the U.S., has helped to create the greatest shift in power politics since the fall of the Berlin wall.
So when Marine Le Pen happens to pop over to Trump Tower for a croissant and coffee, you have to stop and ask the question:
Why?
Far right French candidate Marine LePen is having coffee in Trump Tower right now. She wouldn’t say what she was doing there. h/t @srl pic.twitter.com/9YSC3e6Dl1
— Christina Wilkie (@christinawilkie) January 12, 2017
There was no official announcement, no indication of what exactly she was doing there. She might have snuck in unnoticed.
She didn’t though.
According to the BBC, she declined to say whether she was there to see President-elect Donald Trump or not.
The Trump team, perhaps sensitive to current news about Putin and their glorious leader, were quick to stamp out any rumors. They insisted that there would be:
“No meetings.”
Soon to be White House press secretary Sean Spicer also jumped into the fray, re-tweeting a post by CNN’s Noah Gray
.@seanspicer tells me Marine le Pen is NOT meeting w/ PEOTUS or anyone else from transition team. Adds “Trump Tower is open to the Public”
— Noah Gray (@NoahGrayCNN) January 12, 2017
So that’s that. Just a casual trip to Trump Tower by yet another fascist politician with links to Putin.
Nothing to see, move along.
Except…
…We’re not that stupid.
Whilst it seems clear that Le Pen did not, in fact, meet with President-elect Trump, the identity of the two men she dined with has raised certain questions. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the man to Ms. Le Pen’s right in the photo is none other than Guido “George” Lombardi.
Lombardi lives in Trump tower has links to a number of lives in Trump tower, has links to right-wing European parties according to Politico works as an advisor for Mr. Trump.
If that person was indeed Mr. Lombardi, then yet more questions must be asked.
Because the statement ‘she is not meeting with anyone from our team.’ sounded quite unambiguous at the time.
Now?
Not so much.
Watch Marine Le Pen, like her father before her skirt with the law with racist comments by comparing Muslims to Nazi occupiers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuHE5TAnlcE