On 6 August, Elon Musk turned to his own platform and wrote, “I demand that she be shut down for treason against France!” His target was Marine Tondelier, general secretary of Les Écologistes and a declared candidate for France’s 2027 presidential vote.
Tondelier had told a French newspaper that platforms such as X could face a temporary suspension during campaign periods if foreign meddling appeared, and she named Musk directly as the reason such a rule might be needed.
The exchange looks, on its surface, like another round of billionaire theatre. It actually turns a policy proposal into a genuine trial of whether an elected official can regulate a platform whose owner has already picked a side in her country’s race.
Tondelier answered Musk’s post by saying, “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.”
Her rebuttal names the stakes precisely, a national vote steered from outside its borders by the owner of the platform hosting the dispute itself.
Feud Rooted in Old Grievances
Tondelier’s proposal was not a spontaneous jab. She had said that suspending X for a month “would do a world of good for the French public debate,” describing the platform as a tool “owned by someone based in the United States, with a supremacist ideology, who clearly wants to push Europe into total submission to the United States.”
Her language came weeks after Musk described National Rally leader Marine Le Pen as “France’s last hope,” an endorsement that placed him firmly inside a race he does not vote in.
Reaction split along familiar lines. Left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon remarked that France’s presidential contest had become “open bar for all the manipulators of the world,” and Nice mayor Éric Ciotti, now aligned with Le Pen’s camp, warned that shutting X down would pose “a most serious threat to our democracy.”
Legal Battle Behind the Insults
Musk’s insults accompany a separate legal track that has moved further than most headlines let on.
Paris prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into X in 2025 over claims that its algorithm and data practices amounted to political meddling, and investigators later raided the platform’s Paris offices and summoned Musk for questioning.
French judges are now considering whether X should be recognised as a co-author of content instead of a mere host, a change that would strip the platform of legal protections it has relied on since its earliest days.
The reclassification effort links directly back to Tondelier’s proposal, since a platform legally treated as a publisher becomes far easier to suspend than one treated as a neutral pipe.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has already said his government intends to sharpen its tools against foreign meddling ahead of 2027, giving Tondelier’s idea a legislative opening even if her own candidacy stays marginal.
Recent polling puts Le Pen near 35% support against roughly 4% for Tondelier, a gap that makes her platform proposal more consequential than her prospects at the ballot box.
Similar Clashes in Other Countries
France is not an isolated case.
Musk’s involvement in Germany’s 2025 election, where he interviewed Alternative for Germany leader Alice Weidel and posted in support of the party more than seventy times to his followers on X, produced a nearly identical script of national leaders condemning outside meddling without any lasting check appearing on the platform itself.
President Emmanuel Macron accused Musk of the same conduct in Germany which Tondelier now attributes to him in France, and Norwegian and British leaders raised comparable concerns after his interventions in their own political contests.
The recurrence points to a systemic gap linking these disputes, extending past any single personal quarrel. Individual governments can summon, investigate, or publicly rebuke a platform owner, but none has found a mechanism that changes his behaviour before a vote takes place.
Musk’s wealth and his platform’s reach cross borders more quickly than any single country’s electoral law can respond to them.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates
Read also:
Europe’s Power Mix is Finally Turning Green
Italy Pushes to Weaken Green Rules in the EU Budget
Green Pledges, Crude Gains: France’s Energy Schism
