White House: Trump Would Call Winner of French Election
President Donald Trump will most likely call the winner of Sunday’s French presidential election, keeping with his practice of “reaching out to foreign leaders across the globe, ” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday.
“I would imagine that would be the case, ” Sanders said in response to a question with Newsmax White House correspondent John Gizzi at the daily press briefing. “He’s made a practice of reaching out to foreign leaders across the globe — and I would imagine that he would do that once this election concludes.”
French voters go to the polls to cast their votes in the bitter runoff between candidate Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron.
Recent polls are showing Le Pen, 48, trailing Macron, 39, by as much as 20 points.
In an exclusive Newsmax interview on Thursday, Le Pen slammed her opponent as an elitist “darling of the system” and said that the “fake news” media campaign is as rampant in France as it was in the U. S.
“The coordinated action of the media, isn’ t much different from the United States, against us and in favor of Mr. Macron and his campaign, ” Le Pen told Newsmax. “It has created a false narrative; it has painted a kind of caricature, and it is true that our fight is like David and Goliath.
“And just like then, we must keep a good aim in order to win the fight.”
In addition, Gizzi asked Sanders about whether President Trump supported congressional action to repeal the Johnson Amendment in light his executive order Thursday on religious liberty.
The law, introduced by President Lyndon Johnson when he was running for re-election as a Democratic senator from Texas in 1954, bars churches and other tax-exempt groups from getting involved in political campaigns or endorsing candidates.
“He’s committed to religious liberty and protecting it, whatever that requires, ” Sanders told reporters. “This is the first step in a process — and I don’t think we are taking anything off the table when it comes to protecting the rights of all the citizens of this country.”
