Fact Check: Image Does NOT Show Le Pen Having ‘Meltdown’ After Losing 2024 French Elections — She Was Crying With Laughter

Does an image of French politician Marine Le Pen show her having a “meltdown” after her party lost the second round of July 2024 French elections? No, that’s not true: The image is a still from a 2017 video that captured her laughing so hard she started crying. A search in an online news archive did not yield results that would back up the “meltdown” claim.

The claim appeared in a post on X, formerly Twitter, (archived here) on July 8, 2024. The caption read:

Inspired by Marine Le Pen meltdown upon losing the French election, please enjoy this thread of SAD FASCISTS CRYING. 🧵

This is what the post looked like at the time of writing:

(Source: X screenshot taken on Tue Jul 9 14:25:48 2024 UTC)

Marine Le Pen is the head of the far right party National Rally.

Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google, visible here. Searching through the “Video” tab of the results led Lead Stories to the first instance of the video: A 2021 YouTube video recalled a March 2017 appearance of Le Pen on Europe 1, a European radio network. The title of the video, translated by Google Translate, read:

When Marine Le Pen cried with laughter at Nicolas Canteloup’s imitations

At the 12:01 timestamp, we see Le Pen wipe tears away while laughing. It’s the same face, backdrop and wardrobe that was seen in the claim. Below is the evidence:

(Source: YouTube screenshot taken on Tue Jul 9 16:18:33 2024 UTC)

Lead Stories also did a search using keywords on the Google News archive of thousands of reliable information sites, visible here, which found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim (archived here).

Other Lead Stories fact checks surrounding the 2024 French election is here and here.