The French in the streets
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When the deepening French political crisis of late 2025 came up on Ted Rall's programme, John Kiriakou took the questioner's role rather than the analyst's, and in doing so put two things of his own on the record.

The question about resignation

The first was an admission of the limits of his knowledge. In his memory, he said, going back to Georges Pompidou, or perhaps earlier, he could not remember a French president ever resigning, and he did not know what happens procedurally when one does: whether a successor serves out the remainder of the term or starts a fresh one.

Rall's answer, that the last instance was Charles de Gaulle after the events of May 1968, is the co-host's contribution rather than Kiriakou's, and Rall himself said he would have to look up the mechanics.

What he likes about the French

The second was an aside offered as he turned to the prospect of unrest. Asking Rall to assess the chances of violence, Kiriakou prefaced the question with a statement of preference: one of the things he has always liked about the French, he said, is that they are very quick to go out into the streets. He named the yellow vest protests, and reached back to the student protests of 1968, before asking whether Rall saw the same thing happening again in the short term.

The remark is brief and unelaborated, but it is a rare direct statement of political taste from Kiriakou about a country he has no professional history with. He offers no equivalent judgement about American protest in the same exchange, and he does not qualify the approval, the willingness to take to the street is presented as an unmixed virtue.

Context

The crisis under discussion followed the resignation of a French prime minister, with the stock markets falling, calls for President Macron's own resignation growing, and Rall predicting that Macron would not finish his term. Kiriakou's contribution to that forecast was limited to the questions; the admiration for French street politics is what he added on his own account.

See also

See also

- John Kiriakou
- Ted Rall
