Former number 2 of LR where he had gradually fallen from grace, Guillaume Peltier rallied Sunday the far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour, “the only candidate of the right” according to him, severely tackling Valérie Pécresse.
“I made the decision to support the only candidate of the right, the only candidate faithful to the values of the RPR, the only candidate capable of defeating Emmanuel Macron because capable of bringing together all the voters of the right,” said the deputy of the Loir-et-Cher at Cnews and Europe 1.
“I want France to remain France”, and “it is urgent that the silent majority rise up and take power in the face of the tyranny of minorities,” he also explained in a statement, calling for the “union of all right-wing voters”.
Guillaume Peltier, who presented himself as “one of the captains of this extraordinary adventure” alongside the ex-polemicist, should be appointed spokesperson for Eric Zemmour’s campaign, we learned in the candidate’s entourage. The former polemicist greeted him “a turning point” with this support.
From Sunday, Guillaume Peltier harshly criticized Valérie Pécresse, who according to him has “no chance of winning”.
“Valérie Pécresse and Emmanuel Macron, it’s the same thing” and “I have no guarantee of non-rallying to Emmanuel Macron”, he said, while the candidate LR has multiplied the tackles these last days towards the Head of State, presented as “arsonist” and “disconnected”.
Mr. Peltier also assured that his presence alongside Eric Zemmour would help him in the collection of sponsorships, because “through fifteen years of political engagement, I know a certain number of elected officials”.
On the LR side, the reactions were immediate: the president of the party Christian Jacob announced in a tweet his exclusion from the party, and the boss of deputies Damien Abad asked him to leave the LR group to sit with the non-registered – which ‘he will from now on.
The Pécresse camp has multiplied its condemnations in the face of “opportunism” and the “betrayal” of a “defector”. His spokesperson Agnès Evren praised AFP for “healthy clarification”.
– “Curse” –
“Its extremist ideology has no place within the Republican right,” said deputy Guillaume Larrivé.
Guillaume Peltier “made a serious mistake”, said Eric Ciotti, a close adviser to Valérie Pécresse, who had received the support of Guillaume Peltier in the primaries. Before him, the Loir-et-Cher MP had supported Xavier Bertrand.
Former National Front spent with Philippe de Villiers in the early 2000s, Guillaume Peltier, former spokesperson for Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign in 2012, had already lost his place as LR vice-president in December, following an admiring tweet towards Eric Zemmour.
Before that, he had been stripped of his position of number 2 at the end of May following having assured “to carry the same convictions” as the mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard, close to the RN.
The other candidate for the extreme right Marine Le Pen (RN) vilified Mr. Peltier, who “will have ticked all the boxes, will have made all the political movements”.
“Where Peltier passes the campaigns pass away” and “Eric Zemmour should cross his fingers because I’m not sure he can escape the Peltier curse,” she added, predicting that her rival “will finish below 10% “in the first round of the presidential election.
Marine Le Pen revealed in passing that Mr. Peltier had also “knocked on the door” of the RN a month ago like a “lost dog without a collar”.
Minister MoDem Marc Fesneau, from the same department as Mr. Peltier, also crushed on Twitter a “return to the parent company, at the end of the pretentious, the ambitious and the opportunists”.
Guillaume Peltier “is probably going as a scout” with Eric Zemmour, judged on BFMTV the spokesman of the government Gabriel Attal, who sees in this departure the symptom “of a problem of authority and line among the LR”.
