West News Wire: The National Front party’s founder and seasoned far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has been admitted to the hospital, according to an employee at his office.
The 94-year-old was rushed to a hospital on Saturday afternoon after becoming ill at his Paris residence, according to Le Point magazine.
Sources told BFMTV that his condition has been labeled “serious” by medical professionals.
Le Pen, the father of France’s current right-wing politician Marine Le Pen, reportedly experienced a “mild heart attack.”
According to the politician’s advisor Lorrain de Saint Affrique, Jean-Marie Le Pen was recently admitted to a hospital in the Paris region. His friends and family are worried but composed.
Le Pen had health issues, but she didn’t explain what they were or how he was doing, just that.
Later on Sunday, Marine Le Pen said that her father had been hospitalized but was “doing well.” She thanked everybody who’d inquired about his health, adding that she was going to visit him shortly.
Le Pen, who was born in Brittany in 1928, took part in French colonial wars in Algeria and Vietnam. He became the country’s youngest MP at the age of 27 when he was elected to parliament in 1956.
He founded the far-right National Front, which is now known as the National Rally, in 1972 and remained its leader for four decades. He was also a member of the European Parliament between 2004 and 2019.
Le Pen was expelled from his own party by his daughter in 2015 after saying that gas chambers used to kill Jews in the Holocaust were only a “detail of history,” and urging France to join forces with Russia to save “the white world.”
At that time, Marine Le Pen said her father was “committing political suicide” with his remarks about Jews, migrants, sexual minorities, and other issues. He responded by saying he wouldn’t vote for his daughter in the 2017 presidential election.
Distancing itself from extreme views has allowed the National Rally to strengthen its position on the French political scene in recent years. It now holds 89 seats in parliament, making it the country’s main opposition party.
