I agree with Elon Musk. [1] The playbook of the liberal-progressive left when they are losing to a popular candidate is to resort to legal machinations. Such is the case in France with the leader of the National Rally party, Marine Le Pen barred, by a court of judges, from running for President in 2027. [2] The case; a historical expenses fiddling scandal. The accusation was that her party was claiming funds from the European Parliament intended to cover the costs of aides working on European Parliament matters but was diverting the money for aides to work on party political matters. Even if true, (and it seems like the kind of charge where there could be some grey areas), this is simply an expenses fiddling scandal.
The editor of this site grew up in Belgium in an ex-pat environment close to the EU institutions. I can assure readers that expenses fiddling was completely routine and par for the course. What has happened here is what sometimes happens in semi-authoritarian states. Wishing to eliminate a political problem, but without giving the appearance of dictatorial methods, the ruling elites direct the judiciary, (or they simply take it upon themselves), to find some legal excuse to eliminate someone. They look for some legal violation which is currently tolerated or ignored and this suddenly becomes a serious matter.
This follows from the decision to reverse the result of the recent popular vote for a new President in Romania, on the grounds that his election had been contaminated by “Russian interference”. Even if Russia had planted some social media posts in favour of this candidate is that reason to annul the election? “Soft power” information/dis-information campaigns go on all the time. The US does it; e.g. with Radio Free Europe. (Trump has in fact closed this propaganda outlet and currently the EU is considering whether to throw it a lifeline). The UK does it; the “Integrity Initiative” and other work by MI6 – where planting stories in foreign media is a normal part of business. (For example they planted stories in foreign media in the run up to the illegal Iraq war in 2003 in an attempt to influence public opinion in target countries [3]) YouTube in Russia, before it was blocked, would sometimes surface pro-Ukrainian misinformation/information stories to my account. Whether this was done by Google on their own initiative or working with the CIA I don’t know. No doubt Russia does it too. But to use that as an excuse to remove an elected President is a new development. [4]
Some of the charges against Trump were equally spurious; most notably the convoluted case which was reported in the media as a “hush money trial” but which depended entirely on some sophist arguments which tried to turn a misdemeanour, (inaccurate business records), into a felony, by claiming, that this had been done in pursuant of another crime; election fraud, even though that later crime was never tried, and indeed, depended in a confusing circular way on the misdemeanour charge being proven. The case was tried by a jury in a region with extremely high anti-Trump political sentiment. Again; a regular occurrence, a rich and famous person paying off a claimant via lawyers to make a media story go away, was exploited and weaponised for political ends.
Notes
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/marine-le-pen-allies-paris-court-2027-election-ban-elon-musk “When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents. This is their standard playbook throughout the world”
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/31/marine-le-pen-barred-from-running-for-french-presidency-in-2027
- Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt. The war on Iraq. Context Books. 2002.
- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/9/romanias-far-right-candidate-georgescu-barred-from-may-presidential-vote