Several candidates are expected to challenge incumbent French President Emmanuel Macron in April's election.
One of them, Eric Zemmour, has been referred to as the "French Trump."
Zemmour said he believes “it is no longer time to reform France. It is time to save it.” He wants to end mass immigration, and says migrants who do enter France must assimilate.
In a video announcing his candidacy, Zemmour says: “My fellow compatriots, for years you have been gripped, oppressed, haunted by the same feeling… you feel like you no longer live in the same country… You haven’t left the country, yet it is as if the country left you.”
Zemmour is also a TV pundit. "It’s as if Tucker Carlson was running for U.S. president," one analyst noted.
“Immigration is not the cause of all our problems, even if it makes them all worse,” Zemmour said in the video.
Zemmour said he wants to preserve traditional France: “We need to preserve our architecture, our culture, and our nature… We need to restore our republican school system, its excellence and its cult of merit, and stop exposing our children to the egalitarian experiments of child-centered educationalists, crazy gender theorists and Islamo-leftists…”
Zemmour added: “I have decided to ask for your votes to become your president of the Republic, so that our children and grandchildren won’t have to face barbarism, so that our daughters won’t have to wear the Muslim headscarf, so that our sons won’t have to submit…”
Zemmour concluded: “We will not be dominated, subdued, conquered, colonized. We will not be replaced… Long live the Republic, and most importantly, Vive la France.”
France has a two-round presidential election. Round One, scheduled for April 10, weeds out all candidates except the two with the most votes. Round Two, scheduled for April 24, pits the two candidates against each other. The one with a majority of the votes wins.
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