French President Emmanuel Macron
took power in 2017, the same year Donald Trump first moved into the White House courtesy of the Electoral College. Both were insurgents but stood on opposite sides of today’s new political barricades.
Macron upended his country’s established ruling parties, conjuring up an entirely new centrist bloc as a bulwark against Marine le Pen’s far-right National Rally. Trump took over the Republican Party, ousting traditional conservatives and turning it into a vehicle for a belligerent MAGA populism.
Both leaders are still in power, but their fates have diverged. Macron is mired in a crisis of collapsing governments and risks becoming a lame duck with two years yet to run in his second and final term. Meanwhile, the National Rally has become France’s
most popular party, taking the pole position in the 2027 presidential sweepstakes.
President Trump, triumphantly reelected last year despite his farcical attempt to steal the 2020 election, is riding roughshod over his political opponents — and the rule of law — with the acquiescence of a do-nothing Republican Congress.
