Emmanuel Macron attacks the "extreme right tandem" Le Pen-Zemmour

Europe 1 with AFP 4:13 p.m., March 31, 2022

"If the far right had won five years ago, you would have been vaccinated in December and de-vaccinated in January!" Emmanuel Macron went on the attack on Thursday against "the far-right tandem" Marine le Pen -Eric Zemmour, regretting that their ideas are "trivialized".

"I have never trivialized the National Front"

In the campaign in Fouras (Charente-Maritime), he hammered home, as a leitmotiv, that his opponents are "extreme right", which "we forget" and "that we trivialize". Another argument, the management of the Covid: if Marine Le Pen had won in 2017, according to him, the French would not have had a vaccine because "France would have left Europe".

"I have never trivialized the National Front", "there is an extreme right tandem, which I am fighting", launched the candidate Thursday, questioned by the press on the rise of Marine Le Pen in the polls.

He called his party by its old name, which has since become National Rally, as if to show that he had not changed.

"Collectively, I have heard less that she is on the far right. Twenty years ago, the media that you were said 'it's terrible, Republican front'. Republican political forces said 'never'. There is no longer that reaction," he exclaimed, ten days before the first round of the presidential election.

"People have trivialized it, looked away. They say: it's more sympathetic... so don't be surprised," he added.

"If we say it's a nice program, like the others, that it's not extreme right, everything is fine," he said again ironically.

According to an Elabe poll published on Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron would garner 28% of voting intentions (+0.5 points) in the first round, for which he would finish in the lead.

But the gap with Ms. Le Pen narrowed by seven points in the second round, to 52.5% against 47.5%.

Asked about the risk of a victory for his opponent, he refused to comment on "something that does not exist" and "to make political fiction".

"I will fight to convince more French people than five years ago in the first round and even more in the second round", he only replied.

In 2017, Mr. Macron had beaten Ms. Le Pen in the first round (24.01% against 21.30%) before beating her by a wide margin in the second (66.10% against 33.90).

Leaving Europe

He criticized "a tandem, carried by a clan and a newcomer" - allusion to Eric Zemmour - "who arrives hobbling and who says everything and its opposite".

"He remains convinced of the same ideas, that our problem comes from a part of the country, already say that they are going to hold meetings together, that they are hand in hand" while one speaks of a retirement in 64 years old and the other at 60, he tackled.

"And then the + remigration + ... we no longer understand anything about it".

It's the extreme right and I know that because I know why I'm fighting, for what values".

“If the far right, five years ago, had won, you would not have had a vaccine because we would have left Europe and France does not have a vaccine. You would have had hydroxychloroquine because that those were the beliefs at the time. And you would have been vaccinated in December and de-vaccinated in January, because those were the beliefs" at the time, he snapped.

The Reconquest candidate replied on Twitter that there is "neither tandem nor extreme right" but "a president who does nothing, says nothing, thinks nothing, and who is betting his entire re-election on a final with Marine Le Pen".