The lawyer and MEP should join the polemicist this Saturday in Cannes. His arrival alongside Marine Le Pen’s rival on the far right comes after the defection of two other RN executives and an LR figure.
After the rallying of Guillaume Peltier and Damien Rieu, a new face is about to join Eric Zemmour’s team. According to information from BFM TV, Gilbert Collard lawyer and RN MEP is next on the list. On his Facebook page, the interested party suggested this Friday that he was going to imitate them: “Tomorrow I’m going to bathe in the river […] Rubicon.”
In less than 24 hours, Jérôme Rivière, the boss of the RN MEPs and Damien Rieu, the co-founder of Génération identitaire and former parliamentary collaborator of Gilbert Collard, both joined the ranks of the former editorialist a few hours apart. . At the beginning of January, it was Christophe Lefèvre, municipal councilor RN du Gard and close to Gilbert Collard, who had also joined the ranks of the polemicist and now works in his team.
On the side of the National Rally, we prefer to minimize these rallies. “I have an old experience of presidential campaigns. That people feel closer to one candidate than another is not to be criticized. […] But in politics too, one can act with righteousness. The salami technique consisting of announcing a rally every day, I know it by heart,” reacted Marine Le Pen to the microphone of BFMTV.
A stagnant campaign
On the eve of the Zemmour meeting this Saturday in Cannes, the arrival of a heavyweight from the RN within his Reconquest party! nevertheless constitutes a spoils of war for a campaign which shows a decline in regime. Between judicial news, hectic movement and backlash in the polls, Eric Zemmour is going through a period of turbulence, which his camp is trying to put into perspective by highlighting the new rallies from the RN.
The far-right candidate began a trip to the Alpes-Maritimes, Menton and Antibes on Friday, before a meeting on Saturday in Cannes, where he hopes to bring together 4,000 people at the Palais des Victoires.
He visited the Menton-Saint-Louis border post, not far from which a hundred demonstrators were protesting against his arrival, including Cédric Herrou, the farmer prosecuted – then released in March – for having escorted migrants from Italy and organized a reception camp in 2016 in the Roya valley.
Zemmour castigated the associations helping migrants, who will be “treated as enemies” if he is elected, because they act “against the survival of France. Cédric Herrou should be in prison”he estimated.
Debauched from his rival Marine Le Pen (RN), his two new recruits surrounded him: MEP Jérôme Rivière and former identity Damien Rieu, who ensures that the RN “stagnated” and “regress”, whereas “Zemmour is a rocket, with dynamics and rallies”. On the polls side, the former columnist of the Figaro and polemicist of CNews is in slight retreat. At 80 days from the first round, he is credited with 12 to 14% of the voting intentions, appearing to be unhooked from Valérie Pécresse (LR) and Marine Le Pen (around 17 and 18%) and far from Emmanuel Macron (LREM, 24-25%).