Trump borrows from the far right to blame France’s unrest on immigration | Donald Trump

Donald Trump and JD Vance deployed a familiar American strategy in Europe, claiming that immigrants were responsible for the riots in France that began with student protests against crumbling schools and the high cost of living.

Saturday’s nationwide protests were sparked by rising fuel prices and falling purchasing power. In several cities, they degenerated into clashes with police that burned down a historic city hall and led to 1,800 arrests. On Monday, nighttime curfews were imposed in a number of French cities, including parts of Paris.

“France is burning!” ” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, blaming “immigration of people from a totally different world” for the violence and looting.

He urged Paris to “close your borders and take control”.

Vance, a day earlier, had argued that the unrest was the result of what he called a liberal failure. “Western liberals imported the Third World into France,” he wrote on X, adding that the country had “ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.”

This rhetoric echoes France’s far-right National Rally, whose president, Jordan Bardella, has described the violence as a convergence of ultra-left extremism and delinquent populations in the suburbs. Both Trump and Vance have publicly supported Marine Le Pen, and the unrest has increased pressure on Emmanuel Macron six months before the April election to choose his successor.

Protests in France began a few weeks ago, when high school students began demonstrating over teacher shortages, crumbling classrooms and an opaque university admissions system. The CGT, one of France’s largest unions, supported the movement and called for lower prices, higher pensions and better wages. Anger has since broadened over fuel prices, which have soared since U.S. strikes effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and other economic grievances.

As Trump headed to a campaign rally in Kansas on Monday, the US president told reporters at the White House that he had warned Macron that he was “making a big mistake”.

“The whole world was coming, and as you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that was not the deal,” he said, adding: “We closed our borders. He didn’t.”

Not all protests have attracted equal attention from Washington, as young people have taken to the streets across Europe, in Spain, Portugal and Italy, to protest underfunding of schools, the cost of housing and the broader decline in living standards.

The US president and vice president also did not comment on the protests in Albania, where demonstrators targeted both the government and a luxury tourism project backed by an investment firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Before Trump took the stage in Park City, Kansas, giant television screens broadcast about 10 minutes of Fox News reporting on the unrest that rocked Paris and other cities, including comments attributing the unrest to the French government’s immigration policies.

Earlier today, the official White House X account posted: “If you import the third world, you become the third world. » Many Republican politicians have lined up to make a similar argument, seeking to leverage the unrest in France against congressional Democrats ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections, in which their party faces significant headwinds.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said: “France is descending into chaos because it wanted OPEN BORDERS – just like the socialist Democrats in America. What we are witnessing is a chilling warning to all Americans about what will happen if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets its way.” Senator Eric Schmitt added: “The anti-civilization left is devouring France. It will devour America if we let it.”

The vice president said he hopes Americans will pay attention when they vote.

“This is the future that Democrats in Congress seek for your country,” he concluded.

David Smith contributed reporting from Park City, Kansas