The campaigns of the two candidates for the French presidency in recent days have been very dynamic.
Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen clashed during the only pre-election dispute on April 20. During this election campaign, the far-right leader tried to present herself in more moderate light and a more casual style and the current head of state showed a sense of humor in some situations and also a more casual style at other times. The pets of the two presidential candidates also contributed to this ease to a great extent, BTA reports.
Marine Le Pen’s secret weapon – her cats
Last October, Marine Le Pen said that if she was elected president, her cats would follow her to the Elysee Palace. A passionate admirer of this species, the leader of the “National Gathering” even used the lockdown to take a course for a professional cat keeper and received a diploma. She shares that she can turn this activity into a permanent job, reminds the French media RTL.
It’s not the first time Marine Le Pen has hinted at such a thing. As early as 2015, after her defeat in the French regional elections, she said: “I can stop everything and start something else. To have a cat farm, for example,” recalls Money Match magazine. In front of the French edition at the time, Marine Le Pen admitted that she could be seen getting old, surrounded by these animals. “Cats are extremely intelligent animals. They bring me great joy, comfort me, and give me great tenderness in this world of bullies. The cat is never in conflict, it is an independent animal,” said Le Pen.
Marine Le Pen has three cats at her house in La Sel-Saint-Cloud in the department of Yvelines, where she lives with her three children. The cats are called Kerilio, Jazz, and Gavroche. They are of the Bengal cat breed. Le Pen organizes acquaintances of the female of them – Jazz, with male purebred specimens and then raises kittens, which he gives to suitable families. She reminds us that a Bengal kitten costs up to 2,000 euros, but she is not interested in profit, but in treating the animals well in their new families.
This whole feline idyll has made Le Pen much more likable to some voters.
Macron retaliates with the faithful Nemo
Macron did not lag behind Le Pen. Even before he officially announced his candidacy, in the autumn, while Le Pen was telling the media about his life as a woman surrounded by cats, Macron celebrated October 4 – World Animal Day – with a photo on his Instagram account of his dog Nemo. In a message to the photo, Macron called on the French to take care of their loyal four-legged comrades and not to see the adoption of animals as a joke, but to fulfill the mission of adoptive parents seriously. The dog Nemo was adopted by Macron and his wife Brigitte in the summer of 2017 from a shelter in the department of Evelyn. Now Nemo, a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Griffon and black, lives in the Elysee Palace and often welcomes dignitaries.
Macron also applies hooks
During this presidential campaign, Macron relied not only on the pet to look casual. During a campaign earlier this week in Saint-Denis, he donned boxing gloves for a short boxing match with a suitable partner who was only on the defensive while the president stormed. And in Marseille, where he held a pre-election rally around Easter, Macron posed with an open shirt, showing a quite masculine chest hair. The shot was taken by the photographer of the Elysee Palace Soazig de la Moasonier. The photo caused a lot of comments on the Internet. In a show in which he was a guest on France 5 TV, Macron admitted that it was really warm in Marseille and that’s why he looked like that in the photo. He added that he generally approves the photos taken by the photographer and which are then officially published, but for the above-mentioned photo, he said that he seems to have approved it hastily.
In the same TV show, broadcast on April 18, Macron, by the way, showed an enviable sense of humor. He was hardly allowed to speak, but host Bertrand Shamroa joked about Macron’s constant appeals to the nation during the lockdowns, in which he was documented to repeat the same advice and recommendations. The presenter also made fun of some of their more pathetic-sounding statements of Macron in television interviews, which were recalled against the background of dramatic music. Throughout the show, Macron laughed to tears, showing an enviable capacity for self-irony, which also contributed to his more casual image in this presidential campaign.
