Ross is Right

Arturo Reque Meruvia, Alegoría de Franco y la Cruzada (1948), via.

Monsignor Ross Douthat, Apostolic Nuncio to 42nd Street, evidently a little miffed at all the attention the new reactionary troll is getting, tries upping his own superior troll game ("Is There a Case for Le Pen?"). Shorter:

Say what you will, Marine Le Pen is probably better than Trump.

Yes, and I'd probably be better off drinking gasoline than prussic acid. I mean with the gasoline I won't get lead poisoning, right? Actually I have no idea.

Or I guess I could say there are at least two cases for Le Pen:

• the "publishing violent images" case, for the tweeting of graphic images of ISIS terror, over which the European Parliament has stripped her of her parliamentary immunity, and which could at least theoretically land her with three years and a €75,000 fine; and 
• the criminal fraud case, in misuse of European Parliament funds, €339,000 she took to pay a couple of Front National cadres for non-Parliamentary work (underlings have been indicted, but she still has EP immunity on this for the time being).

Don't know if there is any chance of legal action relating to the party's default on a €9 million loan from the First Czech-Russian Bank, now defunct—in January the Russian Bank Deposit Insurance Agency was trying to collect on the debt on behalf of the dead bank's cheated depositors, but that case seems to have gone away since she visited Putin in late March. Like Trump and even more so, thanks to the French constitution, she'll be in a better legal situation if she wins the presidency, with five years of total immunity.

But mostly I'd just like to say that I think Ross may well be right, in his own terms at any rate: if you're a reactionary Roman Catholic franquista who hates being called a fascist but loves the scent of heliotrope and veiled racism ("What's that perfume, darling? Where do you get it?" "I'll never tell!"), then Le Pen is better than Trump.

For the rest of us, meh. It's not a very interesting question.