State Department Says Trump Is ‘Spot On’ About France as New Protests Hit Paris
The State Department is backing President Donald Trump’s criticism of France after French President Emmanuel Macron called comments by foreign leaders about his country’s riots “unacceptable and stupid.”
Trump “is on point as he is consistently on point,” spokesman Tommy Pigott told Fox News Digital. “So the president is spot on, he’s bringing attention to this issue, he is taking action to address this issue.”
“Mass migration is inherently destabilizing,” Pigott added. “It is something that we don’t believe solves problems, but actually creates problems.”
He said the State Department will oppose international institutions “that seek to impose an agenda upon sovereign nations to encourage mass migration,” and that cartel groups have traveled along migration pathways in the Western Hemisphere.
At a rally Monday, Trump said “the migrants have taken over France” and called the country a “once great nation” being “looted and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity.”
Macron Fires Back
Macron, speaking in Qatar, said, “We’ve had people claiming that we were invaded by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false.” He told reporters he was referring to Trump’s comments, among others, the Associated Press reported.
Macron blamed “foreign manipulation of information” and “AI-generated images depicting scenes that never actually happened,” though he did not say which images he meant. Some leaders, he said, are “using our country for their own political campaigns.”
Macron also said leaders campaigning for elections had repeated AI-generated material “sometimes with credulity,” France 24 reported. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said France was hit by an “invasion of extremist Islam.”
The AP noted that French authorities and police have not linked immigrants to the rioting and that no single group has been singled out as responsible for the violence.
Trump has kept up the pressure. “If Europe doesn’t close its borders and bring the criminals out, like the people that are protesting, Europe is finished,” he told reporters at the White House this week.
The protests began last month over staff shortages at a high school southeast of Paris and grew into a national movement over school funding, wages and the cost of living.
More than half a million people marched last Saturday, and some 3,000 shops across France were damaged or looted. Energy prices in September were 21.3% higher than a year earlier, according to France’s statistics agency.
On Saturday, thousands marched again in Paris and other cities. Police used tear gas in Lyon, where the rally had been banned, and up to 70,000 officers were deployed nationwide, the AP reported.
The Louvre, Orsay Museum and other major Paris museums closed for the day, and shopkeepers boarded up storefronts across the capital.
By midday, police had arrested 135 people and seized weapons including slingshots, fireworks and a katana, Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said, adding that “there has been no major incident,” France 24 reported.
Pigott urged Americans traveling abroad to enroll in the State Department’s Smart Traveler Enrollment Program, which lets embassies send real-time security information to registered U.S. citizens.
Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without charge under the Creative Commons license. Visit our syndication page for details and requirements.
