So much for all that talk about foreign entities interfering in elections. On Thursday, The Atlantic reported that former U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he is supporting globalist Emmanuel Macron over Marine Le Pen for the French presidency.
In an ad he cut for Macron, Obama said that while he does not plan to get involved in many elections, “the success of France matters to the entire world.”
According to The Atlantic:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The endorsement comes three days ahead France’s presidential runoff Sunday: Macron, the independent centrist who won the first round on April 23, is up against Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, who finished second. Polls suggest Macron will win by a wide margin, though abstention could affect the outcome.
Obama said Macron “stood for liberal values” and “put forward a vision for the important role that France plays in Europe and around the world,” adding in an apparent reference to Le Pen that Macron, 39, “appeals to people’s hopes and not their fears.”
As Emily Schultheis noted in The Atlantic last month, Obama and Macron’s campaigns share plenty of similarities. Like Obama, Macron relied on a large and seemingly unprecedented grassroots campaign composed of thousands of volunteers across the country. Both leaders’s campaigns were centered on moving their countries in a progressive direction—Macron’s slogan being En Marche, or “Onward!,” while Obama relied on the slogans “Change We Can Believe In” and, for his reelection campaign, “Forward.”
Wikileaks tweeted:
Obama intervenes in election to tell French to vote for Macron after previously ordering CIA to steal parties' plans https://t.co/nLpkc5fXEm pic.twitter.com/jptPVv3lvS
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) May 4, 2017
In mid-February, Wikileaks said:
All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA’s human (“HUMINT”) and electronic (“SIGINT”) spies in the seven months leading up to France’s 2012 presidential election. The revelations are contained within three CIA tasking orders published today by WikiLeaks as context for its forth coming CIA Vault 7 series. Named specifically as targets are the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) together with current President Francois Hollande, then President Nicolas Sarkozy, current round one presidential front runner Marine Le Pen, and former presidential candidates Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Khan.
The CIA assessed that President Sarkozy’s party was not assured re-election. Specific tasking concerning his party included obtaining the “Strategic Election Plans” of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP); schisms or alliances developing in the UMP elite; private UMP reactions to Sarkozy’s campaign stratagies; discussions within the UMP on any “perceived vulnerabilities to maintaining power” after the election; efforts to change the party’s ideological mission; and discussions about Sarkozy’s support for the UMP and “the value he places on the continuation of the party’s dominance”. Specific instructions tasked CIA officers to discover Sarkozy’s private deliberations “on the other candidates” as well as how he interacted with his advisors. Sarkozy’s earlier self-identification as “Sarkozy the American” did not protect him from US espionage in the 2012 election or during his presidency.
Hmmm….
The Atlantic said it’s not clear if Obama’s endorsement will affect French voters.
“His popularity in Europe and the U.S. notwithstanding, his apparent support of the ‘Remain’ campaign during the Brexit vote, as well his endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the U.S. presidential election, did not have the desired impact. Obama has also said he’d vote for German Chancellor Angela Merkel if he could. She’s up for re-election in the fall,” The Atlantic added.
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