Tuesday January 7, 2025, Jean-Marie Le Pen died at the age of 96. Invited the next day on the BFMTV set, journalist Alain Duhamel, who questioned the former politician on numerous occasions, returned to some of his meetings with Marine Le Pen's father.
After watching an extract from their interviews, Apolline de Malherbe questioned Alain Duhamel on the descriptions he would give to this man: “Republican”, he says. Something to shock the journalist: “Republican, would you really say? Would you put him in the Republican arc, Jean-Marie Le Pen?”. To which Alain Duhamel responds: “No, that’s not what I mean, he was playing the game, the rules of the Fifth Republic”he nuances.
Apolline de Malherbe makes a bitter observation about Alain Duhamel
The journalist and editorialist at BFMTV continues: “He did not seek to take power by force, nor did he seek ideological accommodation, he was the extreme right. He brought the extreme right to a level that it had never had before (…) What he did that I totally contest on the merits but no one had done it before, he managed to impose a political trend by the force of his words and his charisma on television”,
explains Alain Duhamel.
But nowApolline de Malherbe would like to share an observation: “You have seen what you are doing Alain Duhamel and it is perfectly natural,
you have punctuated your sentences since the beginning of this interview with 'and I did not share his ideas' and 'I fought his ideas'. Basically, in the way you have this embarrassment, you almost embody what we also see in the French political class. The Prime Minister who paid a sort of tribute to Jean-Marie Le Pen.”
“I share a lot more…”
Alain Duhamel then indicates: “It’s pugnacious. It will not have escaped you that there is a difference in tone between the Élysée and Matignon between Emmanuel Macron and François Bayrou. Personally, I share Emmanuel Macron's formula much more, that is to say, 'History will judge him', a way of saying that it will judge him harshly. François Bayrou, who does not spare him, who presents him as an adversary but who does not demonize him at all”analyzes the political journalist.
Apolline de Malherbe recalls that Jean-Marie Le Pen was condemned for “negationism”, “anti-Semitism”, for “moments of physical violence”.
