France did what the United States couldn’t: It banned its popular rightwing populist presidential candidate from running for president after she was found guilty of corruption. Because corrupt people — especially those found guilty of a crime by a court of law — shouldn’t be allowed to be president.

France showed the U.S., once again, that a functional democracy isn’t a marketplace where voters go to choose elected officials the way shoppers choose a beverage; it’s a burden, a responsibility that requires not just coalition building and compromise but also the maintenance of democratic norms to protect it from those who would use the levers of power for personal gain.

Related

French presidential candidate slapped with a 4000-euro fine for homophobic comments
Known for his outrageous statements, Eric Zemmour was condemned under France’s anti-hate speech law.

While the Paris court that found Marine Le Pen guilty didn’t mention Donald Trump, he still took her conviction personally.

Dive deeper every day

Join our newsletter for thought-provoking commentary that goes beyond the surface of LGBTQ+ issues
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“That’s a big deal, that’s a very big deal,” Trump said when asked about her conviction at the Oval Office. “I know all about it.”

“She was banned from running for five years, and she’s the leading candidate. That sounds like this country,” he said, even though it’s the opposite of what the U.S. did to him, something he should know about since he was literally sitting in the Oval Office and not in prison. “That sounds very much like this country.”

Trump on Marie Le Pen being barred from running for office: "That sounds very much like this country."

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 1, 2025 at 12:23 AM

Le Pen has much in common with Trump, so it’s not hard to see why he would compare her conviction with his. Both built their bases on opposition to multiculturalism and immigration. Both are outspoken critics of globalization and free trade. Both are very sympathetic to Russia and less so to the European Union, NATO, and Ukraine. Both previously opposed marriage rights for same-sex couples but have stopped talking about the issue lately without ever saying they support it.

In short, they are both a part of the international rightwing populist movement.

Le Pen is a political force in France, almost winning the presidency twice, in 2017 and in 2022, losing both times to centrist Emmanuel Macron, who the left and center-right reluctantly worked together to elect in order to prevent Le Pen from becoming president.

And she was considered a top contender for the 2027 elections until yesterday, when she was found guilty of helping embezzle millions of euros from the European Union with others from her political party. She was sentenced to serve four years in prison (to be served in house arrest), to pay 100,000 euros ($110,000) in fines, and to not run for public office for five years.

It’s that last part that has people like Trump and Le Pen’s supporters in France upset, as well as some people who nominally oppose Le Pen. Take, for example, leftwing mainstay Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who said that the decision of whether Le Pen is qualified for high office should have been “left up to the people.” (Though Mélenchon is a leftist, he, like Le Pen, has been rather sympathetic to Russia in the past.)

And that’s the rub. In the U.S., several states tried to remove Trump from the ballot for what were blindingly obvious reasons, the most prominent of which was how he mounted a coup in 2020 in a last-ditch attempt to hold on to power despite losing the election. The president is sworn to uphold the Constitution. Obviously, someone who opposes the Constitution so profoundly shouldn’t be allowed to be president, right?

The French court recognized that it could be seen as anti-democratic to ban Le Pen from running for president, but it also noted that that fear had to be balanced with the “major risk to public order” that someone as corrupt as Le Pen could be elected to president. Trump, with his 32 felony convictions and multiple criminal indictments in several states, is arguably even more corrupt, but no system was in place to disqualify him from the most important job in the country even though his record and felony conviction would have disqualified him from so many other jobs.

When some states tried to remove Trump from the ballot, the Supreme Court unanimously restored him, even though the Constitution bans anyone who mounted an insurrection or a rebellion against the United States from running for federal office. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that banning Trump from the ballot would be “disenfranchising voters to a significant degree.” And, at that moment, the idea that a leading candidate would simply be banned from running due to the objectively obvious negative consequences simply felt unthinkable.

And now we’re seeing the results of allowing someone to run despite his contempt for the rule of law, as if giving voters the maximum number of choices is the only thing that matters when it comes to democracy. Now, we have a presidential administration with no respect for the power that the Constitution entrusts to other elected officials, like those in Congress who are supposed to be deciding how taxpayer money gets spent and the processes by which federal employees can be fired. We have a president who is still pushing election conspiracy theories and who will likely try to find ways to undermine the 2026 and 2028 elections if he doesn’t outright suspend them.

And we have a president who doesn’t care what the Constitution says to the point that he has repeatedly said that he would run for a third term in 2028, and really, what will stop him if he chooses to run again? The courts? Congress?

Democracy requires vigilance, and that means, sometimes, preventing people who have no respect for the rules from getting into a position of power to abrogate them. France took care of its authoritarian candidate, while the U.S. put its wannabe dictator in the White House.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.