The 5 sharpest insults from Wednesday night's French election debate

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen maligned each other for two-plus hours.

ByABC News
May 4, 2017, 10:17 AM

LONDON— -- Centrist Emmanuel Macron and far-right candidate Marine Le Pen faced off Wednesday night in a live TV debate one last time before Sunday’s second-round runoff in the French election.

The two presidential candidates sat on opposite sides of a round table and exchanged insults for more than two hours with little interference from the two journalist moderators.

Here are some of the fiercest jabs from the debate:

‘The high priestess of fear’

Le Pen called Macron "the candidate of savage globalization" while Macron accused Le Pen of fear-mongering and lying, saying that "the high priestess of fear is sitting before me.”

Terrorism and ‘snake oil’

Le Pen attacked Macron for being too soft on the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, telling him “you have no plan” for how to solve the security issue.

In response, Macron, 39, said that Le Pen’s strategy, which includes proposals to close France’s borders and shut down radical mosques in the country, would lead to “civil war.”

"What you are proposing is snake oil," he said. "I will lead a fight against Islamist terrorism at every level. But what they are wanting, the trap they are holding out for us, is the one that you offer: civil war."

Either way, ‘France will be led by a woman’

The two exchanged blows over Europe, one of the main issues of the French election, alongside security and the economy.

Le Pen, 48, said Macron would let Germany become more powerful and allow the country to dominate France.

“France will be led by a woman, either me or Madam Merkel,” Le pen said, referring to Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

Le Pen has promised to dump the euro currency and Macron said that would be a dangerous step.

“Britain was never in the euro,” he said. “You propose leaving it, and I say this is a fatal step.”

‘It’s rubbish’

Macron accused Le Pen, a lawyer, of not having a sensible plan for leaving the euro currency.

"A big company will not be able to pay in euros and its workers in francs,” he said. “That's never happened. It's rubbish.”

Don’t act 'like a teacher with a pupil’

Le Pen dubbed Macron, a former investment banker, a “smirking banker” and portrayed him as an elitist.

When Macron said, "I am infinitely more credible than you," Le Pen responded by saying that he “should show less arrogance” and that he shouldn’t play with her “like a teacher with a pupil,” apparently in reference to how he met his now-wife, Brigitte Macron, who was his teacher when he was a teenager and is 24 years his senior.

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