Relations between Jean-Marie and Marine Le Pen had deteriorated significantly over the years, until the breakup.
The TF1 news reports them.
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Jean-Marie Le Pen, figure of the French far right, is dead
Among the Le Pens, family relationships are lived to the rhythm of political life. Especially for Marine Le Pen, who for a long time sought her father’s gaze. “I really like asking my father for his opinion, who always has a very fair and modern vision of things”she confided in October 2002, as we can see in the TF1 news video above. To which Jean-Marie Le Pen responded: “People say that, he’s Jean-Marie’s clone, he’s the son he didn’t have. It’s true that I didn’t have a son, I only had girls.” That year, Marine Le Pen was still only legal manager at the National Front. Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has just failed in the second round of the presidential election, remains firmly attached to the presidency of the FN. “Don’t talk too much about succession. The succession is not open”he chanted.
I feel once again that he is no longer acting like a responsible leader.
Marine Le Pen
Yet it was he who hugged her on stage in 2011 when she succeeded him as party leader. That day, Jean-Marie Le Pen dared to make a more than doubtful statement about the Jewish origin of a journalist. This time, Marine Le Pen looks away from a father for whom she nevertheless continues to take responsibility for everything. “So, I take everything. I take everything and believe me very honestly, I am right to take everything because in the balance, what is positive is much more important than what is negative”, she says. An embarrassing legacy despite everything. Marine Le Pen continues to defend him to the ultimate outrage in 2015. Her father then signs in the far-right magazine Rivarol a long anthology of all his obsessions: migratory, racial, anti-Semitic.
The same evening, at the head of the party for four years, she was on the set of 8 p.m. on TF1. “Before being a daughter and a father, I know that this presentation excites the press, we are political leaders. I have the feeling once again that he no longer acts like a responsible leader,” she nuances.
A parricide?”the journalists immediately asked. “Oh my God, what a big word, see the corpse is doing well”said Jean-Marie Le Pen ironically. However, the father and daughter no longer see each other and only speak to each other through legal channels. The party ended up excluding Jean-Marie Le Pen, even banning him from entering the FN headquarters in Nanterre in 2017. As a response to this affront, Jean-Marie Le Pen emphasized that the National Front was coming “to suffer two scathing failures, one in the presidential elections, one in the legislative elections”and affirmed that Marine Le Pen should “resign from her position as president”.
The way she behaved towards her father will undoubtedly be a source of remorse for the rest of her life.
Jean-Marie Le Pen
Marine Le Pen, whose photos are not the most numerous on her father’s desk in the Montretout house, in Yvelines. “I feel sorry for her,” he wrote in the first volume of his memoirs. “The way she behaved towards her father will undoubtedly be a remorse for her all her life”he decides. “This breakup happened, it wasn’t very easy for me. When there are people you love, who say things or behave in ways that shock you or offend you, it’s not It’s not very easy to draw the consequences. I have drawn the consequences.”she added.
The Le Pen family has been torn apart several times, because Marine is not the first designated heir, but her older sister, Marie-Caroline. Candidate for the legislative elections in 1997, she was supported by her father, before turning her back on him and leaving the FN the following year. “I am used to family betrayals. But if we take the democratic rule, I see that two out of three girls follow their father and trust him”underlined Jean-Marie Le Pen.
And like an eternal start again, 15 years later, this time he pushes his granddaughter into politics. Marion Maréchal Le Pen was then the youngest member elected to the National Assembly, like her grandfather in his time. “This young woman who has quality, courage, intelligence, grace, allure”he described it. She also eventually left the party a few years later.
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Despite the differences, Jean-Marie Le Pen brought together his three daughters on June 30, 2018 during an evening for his 90th birthday. He reconciles with Marine and with his eldest Marie-Caroline. In 2022, the beginnings of political reconciliation begin with Marine Le Pen when her father finally supports her in her third presidential race, just a few months before the election. “Support for my daughter who is the candidate of the National Rally. It’s quite natural”he blurted. This will be one of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s last public speaking engagements. The epilogue of a long family and political saga over which his shadow will continue to hover.
