PARIS — Far-right French firebrand Eric Zemmour and his partner, MEP Sarah Knafo, have both snapped up invitations to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony later this month, according to three people close to the couple and familiar with the pair’s discussions with the Trump team.
The invites pose a potential embarrassment to the National Rally, France’s biggest far-right party, depriving them of a potential opportunity to establish ties with the new administration and, potentially, curry favor with Trump ally Elon Musk as the tech billionaire wades deeper into European politics.
Marine Le Pen, the National Rally’s longtime leader and face of the French far right, had not received an invitation as of Monday, according to one of her aides. However, the aide, who was granted anonymity for protocol reasons, did not confirm whether she would accept it.
It’s unclear to what part of the inauguration Zemmour and Knafo were invited or who exactly reached out to them. POLITICO has contacted the Trump transition team for comment.
While it would appear at first glance that Trump and Le Pen were made from the same political mold, fusing old-fashioned protectionism with an anti-immigration, populist platform, the duo have never really hit it off the way the president-elect has with Europe’s other prominent hard-right politicians, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Italy’s Giorgia Meloni.
Unlike Le Pen, both Zemmour and Knafo espouse a liberal economic worldview more in line with that of Musk, who in recent weeks has jolted mainstream European politics by weighing in on domestic affairs in the United Kingdom, Italy and Germany, where he has endorsed the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in next month’s snap election despite the party’s struggles to shake off accusations of having Nazi sympathies.
Curiously, Musk has yet to publicly say anything about France. The SpaceX, Tesla and X boss attended the reopening of the Notre-Dame cathedral last month with Trump, and French President Emmanuel Macron is reportedly trying to lobby the duo to attend his artificial intelligence summit in Paris in February.
Zemmour’s invite could prove to be something of a political coup for a figure whose influence has waned significantly since his lightning campaign for president in 2022 dominated headlines. Zemmour even said at the time he was receiving advice from Trump. But when the first round of the vote finally arrived, the controversial pundit-turned-politician netted a paltry 7 percent.
Since then, Knafo, the sole MEP for Zemmour’s party, Reconquest, in the European Parliament, has been an energetic supporter of Trump’s return to the White House and has cultivated contacts with his team. Knafo attended a Trump event in the U.S. in October.
For Le Pen, memories may linger of her humiliating attempt to meet Trump in New York in 2017, but there are other issues at play for the National Rally.
Trump has vowed to enact tariffs that could spark a trade war with the European Union that hurts both the French economy and the livelihoods of the blue-collar workers who vote for the National Rally. The president-elect’s erratic style also clashes with Le Pen’s attempts at making the party more mainstream.
The National Rally is nonetheless putting together a delegation of politicians who would travel to Washington, whether or not they receive formal invitations.
“It’s not useless to build contacts with the new president of the world’s greatest power, it’s almost a republican duty,” said the Le Pen adviser.
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