Transcript
Discussion (0)
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the sentencing, the verdict of Marine Le Pen in France.
The verdict is guilty of embezzlement, and the sentencing, I believe, is five, let's see, Le Pen was fined, no, Le Pen was fined $100,000 euros and sentenced to four years in prison, two of which were suspended.
the judges did not rule that those penalties take immediate effect so they could be delayed by a possible appeal.
She's going from what I understand.
She'll have to wear a bracelet, so she's not going to go to prison.
And then you have the five-year ban from politics.
So that's it for Le Pen as far as politics is concerned.
And that goes into effect right away.
I believe I got the sentencing correct.
Your thoughts?
Well, I'm going to say straightforwardly another example of using law fair to knock out a political opponent.
Macron is politically discredited in France.
The centre in France is politically discredited.
The left is all over the place and parts of it are unacceptable to the French elite.
all of the indications pointed to a Le Pen victory in 27.
They don't have an alternative candidate to put up against her.
They can't accept Le Pen as president of France,
because if she were to become president of France,
she might actually start to undertake some real changes
in the way that France is run domestically.
And horror of horrors, she might also try to fix relations with Russia,
which is completely unacceptable to the French elite.
She might also start to pursue a more sovereignist policy with respect to the EU.
So you find some charge or rather, you bring a case against her.
The French judiciary are known to be overwhelmingly hostile to her, which they are, by the way.
I can tell you this for a fact.
I know quite a lot about the French judiciary and the French legal system.
I used to know, I used to work quite closely with them.
So they're overwhelmingly hostile to her.
You get a legal process, a guilty verdict is absolutely predictable, and you get the sentence
whose purpose is to prevent her from standing in the 2027 election and being elected
president of France.
It is law fair.
Now, what complicates this is that.
I am not saying she's innocent of the charge that has been brought against her.
This is a point which many people do not understand.
Just as I didn't say that Francois Philon, who was the former French prime minister,
who was knocked out of the election, the presidential election last time,
which he looked like he would win, because of a scandal that was worked up against.
I'd never said that he was innocent either. Again, I know quite a lot about French politics
and about how French politics works. I know all about the corruption that takes place there.
I know the way people massage and maneuver the rules. I have absolutely no doubt that what
Rappan did, if she did do it, which maybe she did, is no different from what all of the others
are doing as well. Selective justice is unfair justice. It's a well-known principle of law that people
should not be prosecuted in a selective way. In other words, they should not be prosecuted
for political motives if everyone else around them is committing the same or similar offences.
The law should not be used in that kind of way. That is what I am saying has been done.
this time. This is a pattern for the Collective West, which is picking up steam, it seems,
who are seeing more and more cases of this type of lawfare being used against opponents.
Why? And who's next? Well, well, indeed, absolutely. Lawfare has been used continuously.
It was used in the United States. Donald Trump was, as we know, targeted repeatedly. Others in the
United States, which his political allies were targeted repeatedly. We've seen very, we've seen
lawfare in Romania. We've seen used effectively in Romania. Used effectively. We've seen lawfare
used in Austria. We've seen lawfare used in Italy against Salvini. Now we've seen lawfare
being used in France against Le Pen. There is an absolute pattern here. It's not a coincidence
that all of these things are happening.
Now, the one thing I would say is that this is France.
I think that pretty much everybody in France
understands what has happened.
Even people who are going to defend it
understand what has happened.
Even people who don't like Le Pen
and who will defend it for that reason
will know exactly what has happened.
What is going to do ultimately is that it's going to deepen the sense of cynicism and the sense of anger in France in particular against a political class, which is using the law in this kind of way.
And it is going to weaken the authority of the law itself, because unless law is administered impartially, then it ceases to be law.
But how does this affect France and the European Union going forward?
I mean, you could make the argument that Macron pulled it off.
He's president without coming in first place.
I don't even think he came in second place.
He remains president.
He's incredibly unpopular.
Yes.
And he managed to knock out the top competitor, the number one rival.
I wouldn't even say Le Pen is his rival because once again,
Macron is not even the runner-up.
He's the third-place finisher in all of this.
Yes.
But here he is, sitting on top in France without any competition.
Yes.
The EU is doing this across Europe, and they're quite, so far, they've been quite successful.
And, you know, I was reading an interview with Mertz, Alexander.
I believe that Mertz said that now the EU needs to take a look at,
Orban. They need to deal with Orban.
Yes. So, I mean, where are we going with all of this?
Indeed. And the IFTere as well. And anybody who thinks they will not go against the
IFTAire and talks about the German Constitutional Court and all of that. I say they
absolutely can and they probably at some point will. So yes, absolutely. I mean, there are two
possible ways forward. Either resistance to this finally builds. And it might happen in France.
I mean, Le Pen herself might force, you know, might lead a challenge to this.
There's still an appeal, by the way, so good, I'm not myself placing any particular confidence
in that appeal, but she might be able to drag it out.
She might be able to get a stay until the appeal itself is heard.
I think this is most unlikely, but she could try to do something like that.
Alternatively, she could put up a member of a party, maybe the Badella, the head of the
parliamentary faction of the national rally and put him up as the president.
But then of course, if he's president, he might be difficult to control when he's president.
And he's a very, very young man.
And one wonders whether as president he would be willing to be willing to.
follow, to break with the policies of the political class in the same way that, you know,
Le Pen, a much more experienced politician, might conceivably do.
I don't know.
But, you know, there might be, there is a possibility of resistance.
Or there is another possibility of success that this will succeed, that political opposition
across Europe will be completely neutered.
And we will have this thing continue in the same way with the political class always remaining
in control.
Well, if that happens, then I think we can judge what will happen by looking at Britain.
We did a program recently in which we talked about the Doom Loop situation that there
is economically in Britain, the fact that the political situation is now completely discredited
in Britain, the fact that Britain is now in an accelerating process of ever deeper decline
with no obvious way out of it, that will be the destiny, the destiny of Europe as well.
I think in the end that there will be a backlash against this. But I'm afraid that before that
happens, we'll get the British scenario across Europe instead and that the result of that
will be a rapid European descent. And by the time the backlash comes, it might be too late.
Yeah, the guard, she's got no problems. She's the head of the ECB.
Ursula has never given up her text messages.
Exactly.
With the pharma company.
I mean, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly, yes.
I mean, I come back to what I said, law applied selectively, law which is no longer impartial, is no longer law at all.
And this is a thing people have to understand saying that somebody is innocent or guilty.
It's true.
I mean, I'm absolutely prepared to accept that Le Penney.
is guilty, is charged, you know, on the law. But the question is not whether she's actually
broken the law. It is what the motive of the prosecution is. If the prosecution is
purely intended to prevent a standing as president of France in 2027, about which I have no
doubt, then this prosecution is wrong. And from what I understand the charges,
the whole case revolves around Le Pen using EU funds for her own campaign staff.
Is that about this roughly?
There's no evidence here that this was done as far as I understand if we're personal and rich.
Yeah, you know, I'll take a guess to say that just about every politician in Europe is doing this.
Absolutely.
That's just a guess.
I don't know anything.
I'm just making a guess.
That would be my guess.
That Lepend is not alone in using funds from Brussels in order to take care of expenses at home.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Okay.
We will end to the video there.
The durand.com.
We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitchie, Telegraphen, and X.
Go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video.
Update, 50% off all merchandise on the Duran shop.
Use the code spring 15.
there is a link in the description box down below. Take care.