Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central. For decades now, France has
Speaker 1: been one of the few countries in Europe you didn't
Speaker 1: have to worry about, right, They didn't make Nazis, they
Speaker 1: didn't go bankrupt, they didn't hire a web teletubby as
Speaker 1: their prime minister. But this weekend, this coming weekend, as
Speaker 1: the French people get up for a national election, everyone
Speaker 1: is wondering if this is the moment when France goes
Speaker 1: off the deep end. A rematch runoff in the battle
Speaker 1: for the most powerful politician in France current President Emmanuel
Speaker 1: McCrone and far right candidate Marine Lapins. The two will
Speaker 1: face off on April as a repeat of their two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen election. This is the far right leaders third
Speaker 1: and final attempt at the French presidency, and if you
Speaker 1: go by the polls, she's never got as close as this.
Speaker 1: With the very latest polls suggesting more support for Marine Lapin,
Speaker 1: more people are asking whether France is on the verge
Speaker 1: of its own Brexit moments or Trump moments. There's a
Speaker 1: possibility of a French Trump. Jesus, if you thought Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was Herni horny before, I don't think the world
Speaker 1: is ready for what this election could bring. Can you
Speaker 1: imagine that, my fellow bellegians. Then Mona Lisa s but
Speaker 1: she needs to smell more. If I win, We're gonna
Speaker 1: make Mona Lisa smell again. So much smelling smelling. But yeah,
Speaker 1: France's current president's Emmanuel mccron is going up against far
Speaker 1: right candidates Marine le Pin right in an election that
Speaker 1: is happening this Sunday. And yesterday they sat down for
Speaker 1: their first and only debate of the campaign, and throughout
Speaker 1: the night you could tell that these two do not
Speaker 1: get along. French President Emmanuel mccrowns barring with his far
Speaker 1: right rival Marine Leapin in a fiery, high stakes TV
Speaker 1: debate last night, two politicians who clearly don't like or
Speaker 1: respect each other. The long route went on, the worst
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. I find it so hard to follow you
Speaker 1: as you have made so many false accusations. Stop mixing
Speaker 1: things up. Do not give me a lesson. I'm not
Speaker 1: giving you a lesson. Do not give me a lesson
Speaker 1: on how to finance my plan. You know, I know
Speaker 1: this fight was considered intense by French media, but by
Speaker 1: American standards, that was pretty true. Everyone stayed in their seats,
Speaker 1: no one screaming. If anything, it looked less like a
Speaker 1: debate and more like a stressed couple arguing at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: You know. It was like, no, Brian, I told you
Speaker 1: my parents gave me that money. I don't want to
Speaker 1: spend it on crypto. I told you, babe, it's not crypto,
Speaker 1: it's an n f G. I was the difference. What's
Speaker 1: the difference? Oh? That was missing from that debate was
Speaker 1: that moment you know, when you're having done an you're
Speaker 1: fighting as a couple, and then the waiter comes over
Speaker 1: and makes it super awkward. That's that's all this mystic
Speaker 1: was just the weights are coming in in the middle
Speaker 1: of that whole fight, you know, just being like, okay, everybody,
Speaker 1: so um the specials of the day are. Oh, I
Speaker 1: feel like I walked into something here, did I I'm
Speaker 1: feeling a little tension. Did he? Did he say something
Speaker 1: to you? Is that? Is that what it is? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know what I feel like, you guys need to
Speaker 1: work something out. I'll come back. I'll give you some time.
Speaker 1: I'll be back in about ten seconds. Okay, okay, bye
Speaker 1: bye bye. Not the stakes for this debates were probably
Speaker 1: the highest that France has ever seen because this election
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot closer than people expected. You see,
Speaker 1: when these two faced off in mccron beat Lapin by
Speaker 1: but with only a few days left in this election,
Speaker 1: recent polls have showed Lapin within single digits, right, So
Speaker 1: she's not leading in the polls, but remember neither was
Speaker 1: Donald Trump in Yeah, my point is, hopefully mcrown visits
Speaker 1: whatever France's Wisconsin is. And there's a number of reasons.
Speaker 1: There's a number of reasons that the pen is catching
Speaker 1: up to mcrown. Right. The country has experienced a refugee crisis,
Speaker 1: there's obviously been a pandemic, and of course there's rising inflation,
Speaker 1: which is why a lot of French voters are angry
Speaker 1: at mccron and saying things like this. In fact that
Speaker 1: if that everyone talks about the taxes, the taxes, the taxes.
Speaker 1: This woman said, we have no spending power. We just
Speaker 1: work and buy groceries to eat, We go out to
Speaker 1: restaurants less, we do less. Otherwise it's really tough. At
Speaker 1: the end of the month, I think Frances collapsing from
Speaker 1: the inside. You know, every time you think pre stereotypes
Speaker 1: are exaggerated, you see something like that. Because No, because
Speaker 1: using your cuisine to comment on the dire state of
Speaker 1: your politics, that's the most French thing you could do.
Speaker 1: You don't have a country is collapsing from the inside. No,
Speaker 1: because think about I've never seen people in any other
Speaker 1: country make a metaphor like that on the news. Not
Speaker 1: once have I seen someone being interviewed in the streets
Speaker 1: of Nigeria being like, our problems run deeper than the flavors.
Speaker 1: That's not a thing, it's not a fig. But of
Speaker 1: course elections are about choices. A lot of French people
Speaker 1: are thrilled with mccron's presidency, but they'll still take him
Speaker 1: compared to the person that he's running against, the notorious
Speaker 1: Marine le pan Because you see, she has a long
Speaker 1: history of being Islamophobic, of being xenophobic, agoraphobic. Basically, she
Speaker 1: doesn't like a lot of ship, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, the people that she does
Speaker 1: like tell you a lot about the type of leader
Speaker 1: that she would be. Lapin is a NATO skeptic. She
Speaker 1: wants to leave the EU and has modeled her campaign
Speaker 1: on President Trump. Lapin has a history of CosIng up
Speaker 1: to President Putin, even putting a picture of them together
Speaker 1: in one of her campaign pamphlets. The policies I represent
Speaker 1: are the policies represented by Mr Trump. They're represented by
Speaker 1: Mr Putin at a that take didn't age well, and
Speaker 1: she likes Putin, I mean to be fair to her.
Speaker 1: They asked her about Putin in twenties seventeen, and back
Speaker 1: then Putin was just undermining elections and poisoning people. It
Speaker 1: was still too soon to tell. She was like, I'm
Speaker 1: on the fence. You never know, but you see its
Speaker 1: views like these that led to Lepen getting crushed when
Speaker 1: she ran in seventeen. But here's what's dangerous about her.
Speaker 1: Just like a terminator, she gets smarter with each sequel. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you see, after the last election, she started to rebrand
Speaker 1: as a kind of gentler racist, you know. Yeah, may
Speaker 1: I take you back to where you came from? And
Speaker 1: the way she did that, she did not abandoning her
Speaker 1: extremist views. No, she just doesn't mention them as much anymore.
Speaker 1: It's basically like when you do a zoom meeting and
Speaker 1: then you point the camera at that one clean corner
Speaker 1: of your apartments. Do you know what I mean? Now?
Speaker 1: All of the sudden, things seem under control, but you've
Speaker 1: still got a family of raccoons eating leftover Chinese food
Speaker 1: on your couch. It's still the same world. And Lapan
Speaker 1: hasn't stopped at just moderating her words. No, she's trying
Speaker 1: to revamp her image to cultivate a more cuddly version
Speaker 1: of herself. Marine Lapan has wrapped herself in nice words
Speaker 1: and her cats. She's become a cat breeder. Everybody loves that.
Speaker 1: This kitten is so beautiful, that her name is her majesty,
Speaker 1: so endurable. That's how you know Lapin had the worst
Speaker 1: possible image before, because her pr people were like, you know,
Speaker 1: it will make you more relatable, becoming a cat lady,
Speaker 1: it's going to help. So that's where France stands headed
Speaker 1: into the election this Sunday, Moderate incumbents with weak approval numbers,
Speaker 1: hoping to hold off a xenophobic Putin ally who's coming
Speaker 1: back for one lost shot at the presidency. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's what I love about French politics. It's just so
Speaker 1: different from the USA. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at
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