If you had to drink each time Marine Le Pen tucked her hair behind her ears during the debate, her trademark nervous tic, it was going to be a long night. Not to mention the astonishing variety of fabricated tales she told with the agility of a trapeze artist. Watching was enough to make you dizzy and nauseous.
The French newspaper, ‘Le Monde’ called Le Pen’s debate performance, “A strategy which seemed deliberate, to prevent a substantive debate by forcing Mr. Macron to answer often deceitful attacks, and which was reminiscent of that of Donald Trump during the American campaign.”
The paper’s ‘Decodeurs’ (Fact Checkers), reported that it found 19 flat-out lies about a variety of topics pushed by Le Pen during the debate.
Le Pen blamed Macron for a series of imaginary grievances caused by her favorite villains, the European Union and the Euro. At one point, she declared that France will have its first woman President, no matter who wins the election. Taunting Macron, she said that the choice for voters is between her and Angela Merkel.
The Left-leaning newspaper, ‘Libération,’ said that Le Pen drowned the debate in lies. Its team of fact-checkers, ‘Service Desintox,' reported on Le Pen’s anthology of propaganda tales, citing 25 examples on diverse topics like justice, Europe, retirement, and surrogate mothers.
‘Libération’ completely debunked one of her favorite lies about the CICE, a payroll tax credit that benefits labor-intensive micro, small, and medium sized enterprises. The CICE is uniquely French and narrowly focused on businesses that use traditional techniques and methods to produce limited quantities of the finely made products that the French consider to be part of their national identity. It reflects the French resistance against the mass production of cheap goods made with cheap labor.
France is a high wage country where workers who earn less than the median are paid more than their counterparts in the US. The CICE is designed to support wages below the median and to keep them from stagnating as they have in the US. It’s not a tax cut for the rich as Le Pen claims. It targets the working class that is part of her base and that’s why she lies about it. ‘Libération’ provided a ton of statistics to explain how it works.
France 24’s coverage was similar. It’s English-language channel said that “‘alternative facts’” poisoned the final French presidential debate with “some of the most egregious lies and exaggerations in one of the fiercest political debates in French TV history.”
While some news outlets pointed out that Emmanuel Macron wasn’t always accurate in his debate statements, he did have detailed public policy proposals that he was able to summarize concisely. Le Pen had nothing but a never ending series of aggressive attacks and her nervous tics. Macron countered successfully but the debate gradually turned into a senseless bickering match with both candidates shouting over each other.
In the video clip embedded below, Macron explains his proposal for government reform. Le Pen asks him if he’ll apply the reforms to the incoming members of his own party, if he wins. Then, she suggests that his personal financial disclosure is somehow in doubt when she’s the one who’s under investigation for hers.