*

From the French far-right fringe, MEP Knafo aligns with

Trump

and tech evangelism

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Knafo builds connections with Trump-aligned figures and

tech

leaders

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Cautious about Trump ties, established far-right leader Le

Pen

is electoral favourite

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Marine Le Pen may be the

dominant figure of the French far right, but in Trump world, a

little-known European Parliament lawmaker called Sarah Knafo is

making inroads.

Knafo, a crypto-aficionado and supporter of tech billionaire

Elon Musk, is one of the leading figures of France's Reconquest,

a fringe nationalist party with strong anti-Islam views led by

former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour.

Knafo, 31, and Zemmour, 66, were among the few French

politicians to bag an invite to U.S. President Donald Trump's

January 20 inauguration, snagging seats at the Capital One Arena

before attending the Liberty Ball later in the evening.

National Rally (RN) party chief Le Pen, whom the president

famously stood up during a 2017 visit to Trump Tower, sent a

three-person RN delegation, but did not personally attend.

Le Pen has spent years trying to purge her party of racist and

anti-Semitic elements. Her "de-demonization" strategy has made

her the frontrunner to be France's next president in the 2027

election, and she has been cautious about risking those hard-won

gains by sidling up to Trump, who is widely disliked by voters

in Western Europe.

Knafo, who is emerging from Zemmour's shadow to be the

driving force of Reconquest, has no such qualms.

She has spent the last few years grafting herself to the

intellectual architecture of Trump 2.0 - a retooled political

brand that fuses U.S. nationalism, tech evangelism and

anti-establishment fervour - to pitch herself as the movement's

natural representative in France.

"Reconquest is the only party in France that defends this

mix: pro-tech, pro-business, but also the defence of national

identity," Knafo told Reuters in an interview.

Reconquest is a minnow compared to the slightly less extreme RN,

France's largest parliamentary party. Zemmour, a Jew of North

African descent who won just 7% of votes in the 2022

presidential vote, has proposed banning the first name Mohammed

and carrying out mass deportations to preserve French identity.

Knafo, who is also of North African Jewish descent, has

sought to modernize Reconquest by aligning herself with the new

political currents flowing from across the Atlantic.

She acknowledged Trump's techno-conservatism is a hard-sell

in France, where the welfare state is prized over libertarian

disruption, but was betting Trump wouldn't back Le Pen.

"The de-demonization aspect is the opposite of what Trump

advocates," Knafo said. "He doesn't have much respect for it."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Le Pen's wariness of Trump appears to be ebbing.

She recently said his pressure on Colombia to receive deported

migrants should be copied by France. Last weekend, she said the

RN was "the best placed in France to speak with the Donald Trump

administration," adding that her powerful wingman Jordan

Bardella would soon travel to the United States.

RN spokesman Laurent Jacobelli did not respond to a request

for comment.

Luc Rouban, a Sciences Po political scientist, said the RN

is finely attuned to voter concerns in France, and doubted

Knafo's Trumpian conceit could succeed electorally.

"The United States is not France," he said.

TRUMP TIES

Knafo studied at France's ENA administrative college, an

elite finishing school whose alumni include President Emmanuel

Macron, before joining Zemmour for his failed presidential bid.

During the 2022 campaign, Zemmour's anti-Islamism attracted the

interest of Trump, who was at a low ebb after losing the 2020

election.

"'Don't give up,'" Knafo recalled Trump telling Zemmour in a

widely reported 2022 call. "'Now you're visible, all the media

will be against you. They'll say you're too brutal, too radical.

Don't listen to them. Don't talk to the media. Talk directly to

the people.'"

Knafo said she subsequently gravitated to Trump-aligned

conservative thinkers, figures like journalist Christopher

Caldwell and Michael Anton, who recently became a senior U.S.

State Department official.

Caldwell visited her at the European Parliament last month

while Knafo met with Anton at Trump's inauguration, according to

posts on her Instagram account.

Anton and Caldwell, who both declined to comment, are senior

fellows at the Claremont Institute, a California think-tank and

intellectual cradle for Trumpism with close links to Vice

President JD Vance.

Last year, Knafo spent around two weeks in California as a

Claremont fellow with young conservative stars, including

Natalie Winters, the co-host of Steve Bannon's popular War Room

podcast. Winters didn't respond to requests for comment.

MUSK'S ORBIT

After the fellowship, Knafo returned to Brussels where she

delivered a September speech that was picked up by popular

accounts on Musk's X.

"We will always prefer ... Elon Musk to Ursula von der Leyen,

freedom to censorship," she declared, in reference to the

European Commission president.

Knafo said her speech caught the eye of Jacob Helberg, a

Paris-born tech executive who Trump has nominated to be the

State Department's top economist. He invited her to attend a

Miami memorial for Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, where she

said she shared a few words with Trump. That led to an invite to

the United States for the November 4 election, and then another

for Trump's inauguration.

Helberg's spokeswoman, Marcy Simon, confirmed Helberg had

invited Knafo to the U.S. events.

While in the United States for the inauguration, Knafo also

met with crypto billionaire Michael Saylor, the co-founder of

bitcoin stockpiler Strategy, to discuss "the upcoming

French elections," according to her social media posts.

Saylor did not respond to Reuters requests for comment, but

reposted Knafo's account of their meeting on X, writing "France

could use more Bitcoin."

Knafo said the links she is building with Trump-world could

outlast his four years in office, as then "JD Vance can be

president."

(Writing by and additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter

Editing by Frank Jack Daniel)