“My collaborator, my companion”. Guest of BFMTV on Wednesday evening, Eric Zemmour formalized his liaison with his campaign advisor, thus confirming the allegations of the people press and Paris Match. Last September, the weekly was controversial by choosing to display the shirtless polemicist in the sea, hugging a young woman presented as his “very close advisor”.
“Who is Sarah Knafo? “Asks Bruce Toussaint, on the set of Face à BFM, revisiting these rumors, while the presidential candidate has been married since 1982 to the lawyer Mylène Chichportich and wants to be a faithful defender of the traditional family. “My collaborator, my companion. There would have been no campaign without Sarah Knafo, ”replies Eric Zemmour, without procrastination.
Beyond their relationship, Eric Zemmour underlines the importance of Sarah Knafo in his entry into politics. The Enarque does not occupy an official position in the campaign, but is omnipresent in the shadow of the candidate, 35 years his senior. The two met in 2007, through Sarah Knafo’s father, a friend of the former journalist, according to Étienne Girard, author of Eric Zemmour’s unofficial biography “Le Radicalisé”.
From what should have been simple sessions of revisions for the competitive examinations of the grandes écoles, a real mutual admiration is born. It is Sarah Knafo who suggests to the polemicist to participate in the Convention of the Right, September 28, 2019. The speech he then delivers is the first real foray into politics of the successful author and the first stone of his transformation claiming to the Élysée.
“At the origin of everything”
On April 6, 2021, Sarah Knafo once more gathered the first support for the almost presidential candidate, at her home at the time, rue des Saints-Pères, a few steps from Sciences-po, where the enarque had studied. Since then, she has continued to act as intermediaries and unites the various players in Eric Zemmour’s campaign.
She is “at the origin of everything”, launches Antoine Diers, his deputy campaign manager, during the candidate’s first meeting on December 5. On the set of BFMTV, the candidate nevertheless cuts short any revival of the intimacy that binds them: “We will stop there (…). There is no first lady in the institutions of the Fifth Republic, so people don’t have to know ”.
“My private life is my private life. I don’t have to explain myself, I still refuse to answer these questions, I attack the newspapers, ”insists the polemicist, who immediately declared filing a complaint when Paris Match seized on this extramarital affair. Real strategist of Eric Zemmour, Sarah Knafo is seen from now on designated as “companion”. “I’ve tried to be as candid as possible,” the contestant said in the show’s debriefing, which aired on Twitch.
