French election: Marine Le Pen BUSTED lifting Fillon speech word-for word.

It seems that amongst the world’s nationalist candidates, plagiarism is the new black. Marine Le Pen has just been caught red-handed lifting an enormous portion of a speech today from her opponent François Fillon. Even if you don’t speak French, I urge you to watch this video. The copy/paste is easy to hear even if you don’t understand a word:

Je meurs 😂😂@MLP_officiel a fait un copié , collé du discours @FrancoisFillon sans pression 😱#ensemble#manif1ermaipic.twitter.com/24YzT0JNzS

Here’s the gist from mic.com:

Marine Le Pen, the far-right head of France's National Front facing a runoff election against centrist Emmanuel Macron in the May 7 French presidential elections, appears to have plagiarized massive stretches of a Monday speech from defeated Republicans candidate François Fillon.

Damning video from Ridicule TV shows long passages from Le Pen's speech on Monday were ripped nearly verbatim from a mid-April speech by Fillon, whose campaign took a similarly harsh view of immigration and foreigners but without the added baggage of National Front's roots in the anti-Semitic extreme right. Stretches of Le Pen's speech are so blatantly similar to Fillon's that even an individual who did not speak French would immediately recognize they're saying the same thing.

Le Pen’s campaign is hilariously attempting to spin this as an earnest “homage” to Fillon and his voters. But with the final run-off just a few days away, we can all hope this is the death knell to her disgusting, hateful Trump-like campaign. I lived in France for a few years and am an avowed Francophile. I have been watching this election closely and believe the French will not stand for this blatant intellectual dishonesty, nor her awful message. The lady did not even wait a full month to crib someone else’s speech!

Of course, as mic points out, this could be the work of saboteurs:

With the origin of the speech unclear, it is possible Le Pen was deliberately or unintentionally sabotaged by one of her staffers. It's a terrible time for such a misstep; Macron is seen as a member of the neoliberal elite and is not widely beloved by the electorate, but Le Pen's rise has sufficiently spooked French political leadership to rally en masse against her, making Macron the heavy favorite to win.

Vive la résistance!