In the middle of the debate on LCI, Jordan Bardella mocked Léon Deffontaines’ economic speech. The communist candidate then responded with a cult reference.
Léon Deffontaines was undoubtedly the least known of the candidates present Tuesday evening on the LCI set for the big European debate. But the 28-year-old communist, whom polls currently place below the 5% threshold for voting intentions, tried to optimize his speaking time to hit his opponents. One of them took it for himself: Jordan Bardella. When the latter attacked Léon Deffontaines on his economic program, the head of the communist list, who fully intends to recover the popular electorate of the National Rally, found a simple and original solution.
The debate was focused on the purchasing power of the French when Léon Deffontaines targeted the RN: “I want to say to the voters of Jordan Bardella: what did Jordan Bardella do for your purchasing power? The increase in salaries in the National Assembly, you voted against. The ISF, in the National Assembly, your deputies, they voted against. defender of rurality, you voted hand in hand with Ms. Hayer against a law which made it possible to fight against medical deserts.”
“You are a communist, in 2024, it would be a question of growing up a little,” Jordan Bardella then interrupted him. “Mr. Bardella, I didn’t cut you off. I don’t know who raised you, I was raised well, we let sentences finish when someone starts,” Léon Deffontaines got annoyed. “You are a communist, sir, don’t give me economics lessons,” added Jordan Bardella. “Ok, OSS 117,” Léon Deffontaines calmly retorted, before returning to his point.
This allusion to the character made famous by Jean Dujardin in the saga of Michel Hazanavicius did not fail to make Léon Deffontaines’ mentor, Fabien Roussel, smile, sitting just behind him on the LCI set.
Reactionary antihero, contemptuous of the new generation, to the famous line “a dictatorship is when people are communists”, the reference to OSS 117 is all the more piquant in this debate as Léon Deffontaines and Jordan Bardella are the same age: at 28, they are the two youngest in this European campaign. However, as the young communist so well reminded us, they embody two very different visions of the world.