La Roche-sur-Foron (France) (AFP) – LR presidential candidate, Bruno Retailleau, said on Friday "never scream with the pack" after the publication of screenshots of anti-Semitic messages allegedly sent by Jordan Bardella in 2013, while assuring that if these remarks were proven they would be "extremely serious".
Published on: 02/10/2026 - 14:16
"I never yell with the pack. I'm waiting to let things settle to see where the truth really is," the LR boss responded to the press in La Roche-sur-Foron (Haute-Savoie) where he went to the firefighters' congress.
The president of LR said he was waiting for justice to rule: “We will see if the evidence that Mediapart provides (...) is robust evidence,” he said.
The leaders of the Republicans have mostly kept silent since Mediapart's first revelations on Monday about a presidential rival whose party has delighted part of the electorate in recent years.
Mr. Retailleau, who is stagnating in the polls between 7 and 10%, nevertheless estimated that if the president of the RN had indeed made anti-Semitic remarks it would be "extremely serious". “These comments are absolutely frightening, overwhelming,” he insisted.
“This is one of the red lines which for me is fundamental, including in the sense that I give to my political commitment,” affirmed the LR candidate who is going to Israel next week on the occasion of the commemorations of the attacks of October 7, 2023.
Mediapart published Thursday screenshots of anti-Semitic messages allegedly sent by Jordan Bardella to another person on the Messenger platform in 2013.
The president of the RN, who has contested the veracity of these messages since the beginning of the week, maintained his line. “The pseudo-proofs from Mediapart are finally out: crude montages, obscure screenshots that can be manipulated, repeating vile comments that I obviously never made,” he wrote on X.
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© 2026 AFP
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