French presidential debate turns vicious
Le Pen, Macron trade barbs ahead of runoff
PARIS — The only faceto-face televised debate between France’s presidential candidates before Sunday’s runoff election turned into an uncivil, no-holds-barred head-on clash of styles, politics and personalities Wednesday, with Emmanuel Macron describing his far-right opponent Marine Le Pen as a “parasite” who would lead the country to civil war. She painted the former banker as a lackey of big business who is soft on Islamic extremism.
Le Pen, the fiery leader of the far-right National Front, railed against globalization and immigration, and portrayed her rival as weak on terrorism. Macron, a former investment banker running for public office for the first time, acknowledged the gravity of France’s problems and derided Le Pen’s proposals as simplistic.
The debate, scheduled to last two hours and 20 minutes, was moderated by journalists Christophe Jakubyszyn and Nathalie Saint-Cricq.
Le Pen’s choicest barb: that Macron, if elected, would be in the pocket of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “Either way France will be led by a woman; either me or Madame Merkel,” she said derisively.
Macron gave as good as he got, with his pithy sleights and repeated suggestions that Le Pen didn’t have a good grasp of facts. He saved his choicest attack for the closing minutes, in a sharp-tongued monologue that targeted one of Le Pen’s biggest vulnerabilities: her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the extreme-right former presidential candidate repeatedly convicted for hate speech and who founded her party, the National Front.
Throughout, Macron portrayed Marine Le Pen as an empty shell, shaky on details, seeking to profit politically by stirring up hatred and the anger of French voters — a dominant theme of the campaign — without feasible proposals. He called her “the high priestess of fear.”
“Your project consists of telling the French people, ‘This person is horrible.’ It’s to cast dirt. It’s to lead a campaign of lies and falsifications. Your project lives off fear and lies. That’s what sustains you. That’s what sustained your father for decades. That’s what nourished the extreme right and that is what created you,” Macron said. “You are its parasite.”
“What class!” Le Pen retorted.
The first question was about the economy, especially the unemployment rate, which is particularly high among the young.
Le Pen said that she would tax the products of companies that outsourced jobs and that she wanted to set up a sovereign investment fund, led by chief executives, to invest in struggling French companies.
Macron said such programs already existed. As the exchange became increasingly heated, Macron accused Le Pen of peddling “nonsense” and she shot back,”Don’t play with me.”
He scoffed at her monetary plans, saying reintroducing a franc for purchases within France but allowing big firms to continue using the shared euro currency that Le Pen wants to abandon made no sense.
She dismissed his economic proposals with sweeping critiques and bristled at his suggestions that she didn’t understand how finance and business works.
The two candidates clashed on the euro and on the European Union; Macron said that European institutions needed reform, while Le Pen said he would bend to the will of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. France’s real competitor is China, not Germany, he replied.
Macron came in first, and Le Pen placed second, in the first round, on April 23, edging out nine other candidates.