François Fillon

François Bayrou, ministre de la justice démissionnaire. En arrière-plan, Marielle de Sarnez, secrétaire d’état aux affaires européennes et députée européenne visée par une enquête préliminaire

21st Century Wire says…
Gilbert Mercier is the Editor-in-Chief of News Junkie Post and the author of The Orwellian Empire.
He is also a former guest on the weekly Sunday Wire radio show with Patrick Henningsen of 21st Century Wire and their in depth discussion can be found here

It is sad that a nation defined by a great revolution has come to this: the docile copycat of a pseudo-ideological struggle at play elsewhere between globalism and nationalism. It is sad that in the country of Danton, Mirabeau, Montesquieu and de Gaulle millions have become resigned to their fate and submissive like farm animals.

It remains theoretically still possible for Marine Le Pen to win the French Presidential election.
The opinions on foreign policy of the conservative candidate François Fillon are close to hers, and her overall programme should in theory be attractive to his conservative Catholic electoral base.

21st Century Wire says…
Macaron – ‘a sweet meringue-based confection made with egg white, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food colouring’
Not to be confused with Emmanuel Macron who leads Marine Le Pen with 23.9%, as compared to Le Pen’s 21.4% after the first round of French Presidential election voting which commenced on April 23rd.

Early projections show that the two winners of the First Round of French Presidential elections are Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
Early indications are that Macron inched ahead of Le Pen, but with polls having only just closed, it is still too early to call.
That Le Pen and Macron would continue on to the second round of voting next month was largely predicted. The strength of each candidate’s numbers will surely indicate who may be the stronger candidate in the penultimate contest.

Unlike the British election, which interests them not at all, the Russians are following the French election closely.
President Putin will never say publicly who he wants to win the French election.  If pressed he will say – rightly – that it is none of his business, and that he will work with whoever the French people elect for their President.  I suspect he even says this in private to his officials.

In the aftermath of yesterday’s terrorist killing of a French police officer, lacklustre French Presidential candidate Francois Fillon called for the postponement of the first round of elections, to be held on Sunday.

The First Round of the French Presidential elections will be held on Sunday as the race is quickly becoming dominated between the conservative/populist Marine Le Pen and centre-left candidate Emmanuel Macron.
However, in recent weeks, the embattled centre-right candidate Francois Fillon has been experiencing something of a resurgence.
As he has done in the past, Fillon has come out and adopted one of Marine Le Pen’s policies.

Russia’s President Putin has met with French National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the Kremlin in Moscow, in what I believe is the first ever meeting between Le Pen and Putin (Le Pen has previously met with other Russian officials including Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin).
The meeting comes in the middle of an increasingly fraught French Presidential election campaign and shortly after the candidates held their first television debate.