Date : April 06 .2025
French Prime Minister François Bayrou stated on Saturday that U.S. President Donald Trump's support for far-right leader Marine Le Pen and his assertion that she is facing a campaign of persecution amounts to "interference" in France's affairs.
Bayrou's comments came in response to a question during an interview with the newspaper "Le Parisien" about Trump's, the Kremlin's, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's support for Le Pen, who has been ruled by French courts as ineligible to run for the presidential elections. He emphasized the need to "not confuse these three positions" and condemned an international political discourse that transcends "all boundaries."
Last Monday, the French judiciary convicted Le Pen of embezzling public funds and barred her from running for election for five years, preventing her from participating in the presidential election scheduled for two years from now. The ruling against her has been widely condemned in nationalist and populist circles around the world, particularly in the United States, Russia, and Hungary.
Trump stated in a post on his platform "Truth Social" last Thursday that Le Pen is facing a campaign of persecution by "European leftists using the law as a weapon to silence freedom of expression and ban their political opponents."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked that "our observations of what is happening in European capitals show that there is no hesitation there in exceeding the framework of democracy during a political process."