Musk says French Greens’ presidential candidate should be ‘shut down’

Owner of X and world’s first trillionaire Elon Musk attacked French presidential candidate Marine Tondelier on Thursday, after the Greens party leader said French authorities should be able to suspend the platform during electoral campaigns in case of foreign interference. “I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!” Musk wrote on X, prompting a strong reaction from Tondelier. “France does not need lessons in patriotism from a foreign billionaire who thinks he gets to decide which European political leaders should be silenced. Democracy is not for sale. Not even to the richest man in the world,” she responded. “I’d rather be accused of defending democracy than of trying to buy it.” Musk, who is a former adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump, has regularly weighed in on European politics and thrown his support behind far-right candidates and parties — and France is no exception. In July, Musk said far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was “France’s last hope,” but her National Rally party was quick to downplay his backing to avoid being associated with the controversial owner of Tesla and SpaceX. Hard-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon also slammed Musk’s attacks against Tondelier on Thursday, before accusing the French government of not doing enough to fight foreign interference. “The French presidential election is an open bar for all the manipulators in the world,” he wrote — a criticism Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot promptly rejected. Earlier this week, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the government was boosting efforts to detect and punish foreign interference in the upcoming 2027 election, while presidential candidates Gabriel Attal and Édouard Philippe, as well as likely candidate Raphaël Glucksmann shared they had been victims of Russian disinformation campaigns.