2 Jul, 2024 16:01

Le Pen accuses Macron of preparing ‘coup d’etat’

The French president has been using his powers to make last-minute appointments, according to the former leader of the National Rally party

French President EmmanuelMacron is undertaking a last-minute reshufflingin government agencies in order to prevent National Rally leader Jordan Bardella from governing as he wishes, former party leader Marine Le Pen believes. The RN is widely expected to gain a plurality in this Sunday’s runoff.

RN and its allies secured the lead in the first round of the snap parliamentary election last week, while projections in the French media anticipate the party ultimately winning between 230 and 280 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.

“It’s a kind of administrative coup d’état,” Le Pen told France Inter radio on Tuesday, commenting on press reports that claimedMacron was rushing to appoint senior civil servants, including to top EU jobs.

Over the past days, Macron reportedly appointedseveral top officials, including the military governor of Paris, the new chief of the General Staff of the French Air Force, the new director of the EU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and three ambassadors. He also proposed in Brussels last weekreappointing Thierry Breton as France’s European commissioner.

According to Le Pen, “the aim” of such appointments is “to prevent Jordan Bardella from governing the country as he wishes,” should the RN win a majority in Sunday’s runoff. Le Pen said that if her party came to power, it would reverse these appointments so it “could govern.”

“When you want to counter the electorate’s vote,the results of elections, by appointing people of your own, so that they prevent you within the state from being able to carry out the policy that the French want … I call that an administrative coup d’état,” Le Pen concluded.

Macron called early parliamentary elections after the RN’s strong performance in last month’s European Parliament elections. The party formerly led by Le Pen and now by Bardella won 30 of the 81 French seats in the EU legislature.

The first round of early parliamentary elections was held on June 30. The RN and its allies came in first with 33.15% of the vote. The left-wing alliance New Popular Front took second place with 27.99%, while Macron’s Ensemble coalition garnered just 20.04%.

https://www.rt.com/news/600318-france-election-macron-coup/

(There’s a reason why PDJT calls Macron a “wise guy”, it’s just another name for a Mafia thug. La Pen really needs to have watches at all voting stations, he's going to a double whammy)

2 Jul, 2024 14:31

Orban pitches ‘quick ceasefire’ to Zelensky

During a surprise trip to Kiev, the Hungarian prime minister argued that a truce would “speed up” peace negotiations

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has urged Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky to halt military operations against Russia in order to reach a peace deal with Moscow. Orban has long maintained that the Ukraine conflict could spiral into a continent-wide war, and that restoring peace is his government’s foreign policy priority.

Orban arrived in Kiev on Tuesday for a surprise meeting with Zelensky, in his first visit to Ukraine in more than a decade. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Orban said he had asked Zelensky “to think about whether it would be possible to take a break… to reach a ceasefire and start negotiations [with Russia], since a quick ceasefire could speed up these negotiations.”

Orban said that he was “very grateful to Zelensky for his honest answer in this regard.”

The Hungarian prime minister did not reveal Zelensky’s answer, although it is unlikely that the Ukrainian leader shared his enthusiasm for a truce. Despite mounting battlefield losses and protestations from some of his own aides, Zelensky has insisted since 2022 that he will return Ukraine’s former territories – including Crimea – by military force.

However, while Zelensky has not abandoned these goals, he stated last month that Ukraine “does not want to prolong the war,” and will “put a settlement plan on the table within a few months.” In follow-up comments last week, he said intermediaries such as Türkiye or the UN could help broker talks with Moscow. (Bidan told him he can’t end the war until the 2024 elections are over in the US)

Orban has pushed for such a plan since the outset of the conflict. Under his leadership, Hungary has refused to supply Kiev with weapons or allow Western arms into Ukraine through its borders. Budapest has also threatened to veto several of the EU’s 14 packages of sanctions on Moscow, agreeing to the measures only after securing concessions from Brussels, including a partial exemption from the bloc's oil embargo and a guarantee that its nuclear energy sector won’t be affected by future packages.

These positions have placed Orban at loggerheads with Zelensky and the EU leadership.“The Brussels bureaucrats want this war, they see it as their own, and they want to defeat Russia,”he wrote in the Magyar Nemzet newspaper on Saturday.

Orban traveled to Kiev a day after Hungary assumed the European Council’s rotating presidency. “The goal of the Hungarian presidency is to contribute to solving the challenges facing the European Union. My first trip therefore led to Kiev,” Orban said in a statement on his Facebook page on Tuesday. (How is it that the Ukrainians are dying for Brussels to punish Russia, that could have decimated all of Ukraine in the first year, and they didn’t. Why don’t the Ukrainians take issue with them dying for the EU, when they are not even EU members?)

Aside from pushing Zelensky toward a ceasefire, Orban said he used the face-to-face meeting to lobby for the rights of Ukraine’s Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, whom Budapest argues are treated as second-class citizens by Kiev's exclusionary cultural policies. The pair also discussed trade, energy, and infrastructure cooperation.

“We are trying to close all previous disputes and focus on the future. We want to improve relations between our countries,” Orban told reporters.

https://www.rt.com/russia/600323-orban-zelensky-ukraine-ceasefire/

2 Jul, 2024 16:21

Major US Democrat donors threatening party over Biden – media

Discontent over the president’s debate performance “appears to be turning into a full-blown party revolt,” the Daily Mail has reported

A growing number of top Democratic donors are fuming over US President Joe Biden’s performance in his debate with GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

Biden's performance during Thursday's face-off with Trump, widely seen as incoherent and fumbling, has also highlighted concerns about the US president's ability to govern.

Several US media outlets reported that the showdown had left many Democrats and their donors scrambling to find a replacement for Biden as the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

The British dailyclaimed that the discontent “appears to be turning into a full-blown party revolt” in the wake of the event, adding that key Democratic donors are threatening to “pull the plug” unless Biden drops out of the race.

Former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson, who has donated several hundred thousand dollars to theDemocratic Party, lashed outat the US president, telling the Daily Mail:“For Biden’s own good and the good of the country, he should step aside immediately.”He added that the incumbent had so far failed to reassure any party donors, which he claimed “confirms my worst fears.”

Meanwhile, several Democrats interviewed by the tabloidvented their frustrationat what they called attempts byBiden’s team to “gaslight” them into believing there was nothing to worry about. Tilson echoed this sentiment, saying: “They’re p**sing on our legs and telling us it’s raining… How stupid do they think we are?”

An Axios report also provided insight into the campaign’s push to reassure donors during a Zoom call on Monday. The outlet claimed, citing sources, that while “there wasn’t much panic” during the call, there was a lot of skepticism. “It was a damage-control call,” one source said.

However, the report said Biden’s team had not tried to put a positive spin on the debate debacle, instead echoing the president’s own assessment, in which he acknowledged that “I don’t debate as well as I used to.” At the same time, Biden officials reportedly gave donors data and made argumentsdesigned to prove that the president still has a chance of beating Trump.

A CNN flash poll conducted after the debate found that67% of the viewers thought Trump had performed better. Meanwhile, according to a CBS News poll,72% of Americans say Biden does not have the mentaland cognitive health capabilities to serve as president.

https://www.rt.com/news/600327-biden-democart-donors-discontent/