“In a year, to the day, I will invite you to the Élysée Palace and our relations will no longer be the same. Eric Zemmour was already dreaming of being President of the Republic, Monday afternoon, during his greetings to the press from his Parisian HQ. A form of the Coué method? After a thunderous start to the campaign and a strong breakthrough in the polls, the leader of the Reconquest party seems to be running out of steam. The former journalist, down to fourth position in the latest opinion polls, presented his new recruits on Monday and some proposals on the school to try to revive the machine.
Peltier’s rallying, turning point or campaign “non-event”?
“I am very proud to have them by my side. “All smiles, Eric Zemmour presented Monday his rallies: his” friend “Vendée, the boss of Puy-du-Fou and ex-presidential candidate Philippe de Villiers and Guillaume Peltier, the former number 2 of the Republicans. The deputy for Loir-et-Cher, who went through the National Front in his youth, is a significant catch while the right-wing defectors promised by Eric Zemmour are long overdue. In front of the journalists, the candidate also called Eric Ciotti and the right wing of LR to follow suit. “I still think that these people have nothing to do with Madame Pécresse. In politics, some prefer France to their party, and others prefer their party to France. Guillaume Peltier is in the first category. “
Support from Xavier Bertrand before the primary, then from Eric Ciotti, the person had been removed from the governing bodies of LR in December after a tweet deemed too laudatory towards Eric Zemmour. At Paris HQ on Monday, this war is interpreted as the result of Zemmour’s “successful presidential change” since his first meeting in Villepinte in December. On the other hand, it is a “non-event” for Valérie Pécresse as for Marine Le Pen. “The impact is zero. Because for Madame Michu, Guillaume Peltier is nobody, ”mocks someone close to the RN candidate.
Zemmour now struggles to impose his campaign themes
This reinforcement comes at the right time for Eric Zemmour, who recognized on Friday on Europe 1 that he now struggled to impose his campaign themes. The candidate accused Emmanuel Macron of “cynically instrumentalizing” the health crisis. “He wants to make the Covid the subject of the presidential election so that we can be quiet, that we do not talk about his record, and the identity of France that I had managed to impose as a major theme of the campaign to the fall. “
In recent days, the coronavirus epidemic and the debates around the vaccine pass seem to have taken precedence over other themes. “We cannot pretend that the Covid does not exist, but it must not be the one and only subject of the campaign. We do not want to fall into this trap set by the president. We wish to discuss other subjects, such as immigration or the economy, ”assures Dénis Cieslik, one of the executives of the Reconquest movement.
To find a second breath, Eric Zemmour also resumed the movements on the ground. He was in Eure-et-Loir last Friday, in this “peripheral France”, rural, “forgotten”, dear to his rival Marine Le Pen. The next day, the candidate went to Sables-d’Olonne (Vendée), grilling politeness to Marine Le Pen, who had to cancel his trip announced a few days earlier in the seaside resort. A feverishness of the Zemmour clan which sounds like an admission of weakness, for someone close to the candidate RN. “He leads a Potemkin campaign, he crosses the villages without ever meeting a single Frenchman. In fact, he has already lost his bet on the union of the rights. He found himself dry, without fuel for the rest. “
Eric Zemmour hopes above all to avoid going off the road. The candidate claims to have collected only about 300 pledges of sponsorship out of the 500 required to compete in the election.