Rumors were flying this morning that Donald Trump may be set to meet with Marine Le Pen, the French incarnation of the global populist putsch.
Well in what can only be described as hilarious example of political headline hockey, Bloomberg sent out the following alerts around 30 seconds apart:
- NO INDICATION OF MEETING BETWEEN TRUMP, LE PEN
- MARINE LE PEN IS AT TRUMP TOWER
This seemed appropriate…
FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
From Bloomberg, earlier this morning:
French National Front leader Marine Le Pen is in New York on an unannounced visit less than four months before France’s presidential election, according to a senior campaign official.
Le Pen, who leads in the latest opinion poll for the presidency, is making a private visit to New York, her campaign chief of staff, David Rachline, said in a text-message exchange. Donald Trump had no plans to meet with Le Pen, according to an aide to the president-elect, who asked not to be identified without authorization to speak publicly.
“It’s not on her public agenda,” Rachline said, when asked if she planned a meeting with Trump or officials close to him. “We don’t communicate about private visits.”
Le Pen is set to launch her official campaign on Feb. 4 in a meeting with supporters in the French city of Lyon. She has repeatedly said she was supportive of Trump’s policies for the U.S. and called him “a sign of hope” for European anti-establishment politicians in a press conference this month.
Trump has met on several occasions with Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U.K. Independence Party, most recently in December.
Maybe she doesn’t want to make a circus of it like Farage (bad optics)… gotta make ‘alt-right’-ism seem intellectual to the French. Or maybe she doesn’t want to come off as presumptuous. Regardless, you can bet she was meeting with Bannon and the rest of the Breitbart crew about promoting their nativist agenda in Europe.