Trump's prints all over French election

To the editor:

The news of Marine LePen’s second place finish in the first round is disturbing, but not shattering. 

What is more likely to be remembered in the 2018 U.S. midterms is that Trump and his ally Putin supported her, and that she ran as a thinly disguised, quasi-neo-Nazi makeover.

Even with their politicking and Putin’s monetary support and cyber-intervention by his trolls, LePen did only marginally better than her father, Jean-Marie LePen. Her father was more overtly neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic, and he gained almost 17 percent, finishing second to the notoriously corrupt Jacques Chirac by about three percentage points.

That’s almost the same as his daughter’s gap behind first place candidate Emmanuel Macron. 

Marie’s run will likely be only an historical footnote, but Trump’s support of her will still resonate.

ALAN SAKS