As a teen, he waves his feet in the pool so that the lapping of water echoes in the phone. “There, you hear ? I not bluffing.” In the end of August, Thierry Mariani is still on vacation “somewhere in Asia”, in its former gigantic constituency of French citizens abroad, of which he was a member from 2012 to 2017. “I’m not in Russia. Also, the beaches in Crimea are not terrible”, takes care to specify, not without provocation, as one who presides in since 2012, the Dialogue franco-Russian, a lobby, pro-Putin.

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it enjoys a sun bath, it is as if he is ready to dive back into politics. Forced to rest early last year, after its wide defeat to the legislative in the face of a candidate LREM, Thierry Mariani returns through a door, without surprise, very to the right, that of the union of Republicans (LR) and the Rassemblement national (RN, ex-FN). An option that he argues publicly since an interview in the JDD of march. The defender of the borders – he was the rapporteur of all the laws of immigration from 2002 to 2010 – that is now down only one : the one that existed until then between the right and extreme right. Nothing is official. But, income from the swimming pool and chaining the coffee doubles in a bistro in the Seventeenth arrondissement of Paris , he entrusted to Express that there is a “strong chance” that his name is on the list of RN to the european next year.

“With Marine Le Pen, we talked about everything, cats included”

This is the home of a “friend”, at the beginning of 2018, he met Marine Le Pen in head-to-head for the first time. “I was pleasantly surprised. On the tv shows, where it was already crossed, it was very short. I discovered that she is capable of self-criticism. We talked about everything, cats included,” says the happy owner of the Maasai, a somali of 2 years. Between the president of the RN and the ex-minister of Nicolas Sarkozy, it matches. “For me, the output of France, the european Union is a red line. On this topic, the clarification is in progress within the RN,” says he. It has also believed to see in Marine Le Pen quality : “Unlike her father who was fun, she wants to win.” Also. “The gathering, this is not a program. It is a tactic.” Gold, he says, “the right can not win alone”. Nor can you count on its traditional allies, the centrists, who are tempted by the adventure macroniste.

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of Course, Thierry Mariani does not have much force of its nature. “I don’t get up in the morning saying to myself My God, as long as I don’t wear my underwear on the same side as Marine Le Pen, î he told already to Mediapart in 2011, when it took the head of the FN. And if he believed in a column in le Figaro that it was “neither courting nor demonize Marine Le Pen” but the “fight”, it was only because of his “economic and social program”. It assumes even today there are disagreements in the field. But knows that the eu will, on the issue of migration.

The Right popular reactivated

In the meantime to formalize his candidacy, Thierry Mariani has risen, at the end of the summer, the Right popular. This label was created in 2010 to remember the good memories of Nicolas Sarkozy, who “had promised the Kärcher, but forgot to plug the pipe”. This renaissance was not self-evident. On the evening of his defeat in legislative elections in 2017, he railed, bitter, said : “Being beaten by someone who has worked for Egobet years, OK. But then, I’m beaten by a mark [In march !]. What’s the point of having played the social workers during all this time ?”

Bashar al-Assad, French mp Thierry Mariani, and a bonus veren siteler delegation of members of the French parliament, on 8 January 2017 to Damascus.

afp.com/STRINGER

“Like everyone else”, he thought to create a box of consultants. “But the business, this is not my DNA,” he says. “I discovered that it was nice to wake up late and enjoy life.” For this, he sold his homes in Valréas and Orange, liquidated, all that was linked at his Vaucluse original. What does “be away from the need for two years”, he said, while showing the level of his or her current account on her smartphone. But, he admits, with his straight-talking normal and its touch of southern accent : “retirement, that is emmerdant. The policy, it is tickling, I gratouille.”

“it is Not easy to cross the Rubicon”

the leaders of the hives some of her new friends who remind us opportunely that he voted in favor of the ratification of the Lisbon treaty in 2008. “I made it without enthusiasm, it was part of the commitment a presidential”, justifie-t-he softly. But this nostalgic of the “RPR canal history” knows that this criticism prevents a run for the top of the list. It will not take either his card to the RN. Be included on the list, it is already a lot. “It is not easy to cross the Rubicon…”

When we attack to a dam, it triggers a little more than a lapping. Thierry Mariani faces a torrent of reactions. “I spent a difficult summer, he acknowledges. If I had been sentenced to the prison farm, it would have been less worse. There is strong social pressure. It is bigger than I thought”, he admits. The shock wave is even coming from the family environment of this small-son of mason of the Abruzzo region.

A long experience in the outcasts

But the animal has thick leather. “Cause, that I have never been displeased. Force, we get used to it.” In the field, its CV is updated. “I began to turn in 2001 with an amendment, which made the rave parties to a prior declaration to the prefecture. For the press, it was fascisant”, he remembers, ” never very proud of pretending to be the villain. The following year, he went to Baghdad and met Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister of Saddam Hussein, to protest against the us military intervention. The move is a scandal. The deputy Didier Julia, who was with him, remembered, in M le magazine du Monde, Thierry Mariani, once on the tarmac in iraq, he had breathed, “smile” : “This is the beginning of trouble”. Already the pleasure to smell the sulfur. And breathe.

His inclination for the rogues has never dried up. After Baghdad, the road to Damascus. Over the past three years, this fool of realpolitik has met five times Bashar al-Assad, the ally of Russia, a country which he visits each month. “You know, with make the center pedestrian city, Moscow has become very enjoyable,” sliding-t-il, falsely ingenuous. It is not uncommon to come across in a palace of Astana, in Kazakhstan, or Chisinau, Moldova. “Nothing fishy. I have miles to spend and friends abroad,” he replied, sweeping a backhand to hand the suspicion of racketeering, never demonstrated, that stick to the skin. In a recent article, Paris Match has called “the bad boy of the Republicans”. I was pissed off. Since, on the photo, we can see it, cigarette between his lips. His mother believes that he has stopped smoking. A true ado.