Donald Trump has decided to heat up the rally in support of Marine Le Pen, scheduled for this Sunday in Paris, with one of his incendiary messages on Truth Social: "All of this is very bad for France and for the Great French People, no matter which side they are on, FREE MARINE LE PEN!". The American President wrote the message on Thursday night as a culmination of the "Liberation Day" after declaring a trade war against the rest of the world.
Trump went further than his comments earlier this week when he compared the sentence against Le Pen (five years of disqualification from public office, four years in prison, and a ¤100,000 fine) with his own legal struggles: "The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech, and censor their Political Opponent, this time going so far as to put that Opponent in prison"
"I don't know Marine Le Pen, but do appreciate how hard she worked for so many years", wrote Trump. "She suffered losses, but kept on going, and now, just before what would be a Big Victory, they get her on a minor charge that she probably knew nothing about — Sounds like a 'bookkeeping' error to me" (the leader of the National Rally was convicted along with about twenty party colleagues for devising a system to divert funds totaling more than ¤2.9 million into the party's coffers).
The American Vice President JD Vance also defended this week the argument that it was "a minor issue" and that Le Pen "was not personally involved." Vance recalled how the far-right leader was leading in the polls and stated that she has been a victim of "a witch hunt by the European left that uses the judiciary to curtail freedom of speech."
"When the radical left does not win through democratic votes, it abuses the legal system to imprison its opponents," wrote the billionaire and Trump advisor Elon Musk on his network "X". "It's their typical playbook worldwide."
Anticipating the White House, the first international reaction to Marine Le Pen's sentence was, in any case, from the Kremlin, through its spokesperson Dmitry Peskov: "More and more European capitals are choosing to trample on democratic norms."