The face told him something, but he couldn’t really remember who it was. Even when told the name of the new prime minister, Michel Barnier, Jean-Marie Le Pen could not remember the slightest episode of his career. Not even placing him on the French political scene.
In front of him, the television is constantly on and blaring programs from BFM-TV or CNews, but his visitors half confess the same observation: the former president of the National Front (FN) no longer seems to really understand the world. that surrounds him and even less the upheavals of current events. Do you remember only the most important episodes of your own political life? “The other time, when I was talking to him about April 21, 2002, he no longer knew that he had gone to the second round of the presidential elections”, confides Lorrain de Saint-Affrique, faithful for fifty years, who continues to take the train from Le Mans once or twice a month to spend two or three days with him.
At 96 years old, the former leader of the French extreme right gets up around 3 or 4 p.m., walks a little arm in arm with his caregiver through the garden of La Bonbonnière, this house occupied by Jean-Marie and Jany Le Pen in Rueil – Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), an elegant suburb west of Paris, but it goes no further. Since February, the ancient so-called “Menhir” has been under protection “future protection mandate,” which gives his three daughters the right to supervise all his decisions.
He will not appear at the trial of the FN’s parliamentary assistants in the European Parliament, for which he was accused of “embezzlement and complicity in the misappropriation of public funds”, except for two medical certificates that prove the alteration of his cognitive faculties and his Incapacity. to respond to the magistrates.
“He’s pretending”
The few visitors, former elected officials and traveling companions from the National Front or his ex-wife, Pierrette, who met him again (no journalist has had access to him since 2023) all say almost the same thing: Jean-Marie Le Pen is today considerably weakened intellectually. Can repeat ready-made phrases with an awkward air. “I look at the world…” EITHER “You have to let things happen” –, the conversation rarely goes any further.
These songs from the interwar period that he sings willingly, these Latin quotes that he still knows, these stark jokes that he still dares to dare, are like a mask meant to deceive. “He has preserved elements of the language of his past political life, a kind of reflection that can create an illusion for a few moments, says his youngest daughter, Yann, the only one of Le Pen’s three daughters who agrees to talk about her father with him. World. He’s been acting for so long that it’s like that veneer remains on him. But in reality, he is pretending. »
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