Former US President Donald Trump offered his encouragement to the French far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour in a phone call on Monday, telling him to stay courageous and not to give in to pressure, Zemmour’s campaign manager said on Tuesday.
According to Guillaume Peltier, the vice-chairman of Zemmour’s ‘Reconquete’ movement, the call took place late on Monday evening and lasted around 40 minutes, during which Trump told Zemmour to hold firm.
Peltier stated that the call was held since it was deemed difficult for Zemmour to travel to Florida to meet Trump in person after his office responded positively to his campaign’s various requests.
According to Peltier’s account of the conversation, Trump told Zemmour that tenacity and endurance are what might make him win at the end of a campaign.
However, Randy Yaloz from the Republican Party’s overseas group in France, who attended the call, pointed out that although the conversation was cordial, Trump had taken no decision to officially endorse Zemmour at this stage.
Paris-born polemicist of Algerian-Jewish descent, the far-right Zemmour has been dubbed “Le Trump” after he has drawn comparisons with the former US leader when openly expressing his opposition to immigration and Islam.
Some experts go as far as suggesting that Trump’s 2016 campaign is the blueprint for the current campaign of anti-establishment Zemmour, who has been convicted several times for inciting racial hatred although he’s adamant in claiming he is not racist.
Espousing a nativist agenda, Zemmour has previously proposed banning foreign-sounding names, including Mohammed, and has propagated the Grand Remplacement (Great Replacement) theory, a conspiracy which claims complicit forces are attempting to repopulate France with Africans.
Much like Trump, Zemmour, which is fourth in opinion polls, strives to position himself as an outsider to traditional parties and the French political establishment and is vying for the far-right electorate along with the Rassemblement National party’s Marine Le Pen, who is polling second.
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