Under a crushing sun, Eric Zemmour managed to fill the Place du Trocadéro, he who aspired to make his gigantic meeting at the foot of the Eiffel Tower “the biggest show of force of this campaign”. “You are 100,000! 100,000 French people who stop at nothing”he trumpeted, Sunday, March 27.
Never mind that its events director, Olivier Ubéda, had mocked the candidates a week earlier who were inclined to “cheating on the numbers” – way to refute the 100,000 participants claimed at the Trocadéro by Nicolas Sarkozy in May 2012, or the 200,000 displayed by François Fillon in March 2017. “Question of square meters”, had justified Ubeda. Eric Zemmour brought together tens of thousands of supporters: an excited crowd claiming to be right-wing, and of all ages, strollers included, transformed into a tide of tricolor flags.
Two words, however, cast an ominous shadow over this gathering: « Macron assassin ». Throughout the afternoon, the crowd had taken up vindictive slogans: “Macron asshole! “, “Fuck him! “, ” In the plane ! », « Out the Arabs! », « France to the French »…
Clips of relatives of victims killed by men with foreign-sounding names played on giant screens. Then, at 4.40 p.m., Eric Zemmour quotes the murders of Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll, and evokes the attacks by “scum” : “You think it’s you who should be ashamed. But no, it is the state that should be ashamed! I am here to fight against fate! » Suddenly, the crowd resumes in chorus: « Macron assassin ! » Eric Zemmour stops, twelve long seconds, the time to let the slogan resonate ten times. Then he picks up the thread of his speech.
A “vital vote”
Very quickly, many political leaders – the candidate of the Les Républicains (LR) party, Valérie Pécresse, the president of the LR group in the National Assembly, Damien Abad, his counterpart for La République en Marche (LRM), Christophe Castaner, or again the President (LRM) of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand – denounced earlier “a delirium”, sometimes “a shame for democracy and the Republic”.
The far-right candidate’s campaign team ended up telling the press that Eric Zemmour “had not heard it and that he would not take up the expression on his own account”before clarifying that he condemned her.
A more diffuse embarrassment hovered over the Trocadero. The Reconquest candidate! has long galvanized his audience and, beyond that, the mass of those who follow him on social networks: “Nothing and no one will prevent us from writing the destiny of our country! Nothing and no one will steal this election from us! » He claimed “a life-size survey, a taste of the surprise to come”and insisted on the usefulness of the last two weeks of mobilization. ” Hurry uphe repeated, it is quarter to midnight. »
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