US President Donald Trump has said that Paris will soon become a Muslim city, blaming immigration for the riots that swept France over the weekend of October 17.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on October 19, he said: “Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon.” He added that France had been ruined and would be hard to bring back.
Trump said the unrest had nothing to do with schools and everything to do with immigration. He said he had told French President Emmanuel Macron to close the border when he himself took office in 2017.
The US President had already linked the French school protests to mass migration earlier in October, in remarks that drew a rebuke from French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot.
Asked about Macron’s suggestion that the war against Iran lay behind the protests, Trump dismissed the account as fake news. He then asked the reporter which outlet she worked for and, told it was The Daily Wire, said the site was good.
Macron, in a televised address on October 18, separated demonstrators with legitimate grievances from those who looted and burned, blaming much of the violence on left-wing activists. He put rising fuel and living costs down to the conflict in the Gulf, in which he said France had played no part, and promised that those who had looted would pay for the damage.
About 550,000 people marched on October 17 against the cost of living and conditions in state schools, according to the authorities. The interior ministry recorded 2,397 arrests and 997 police and gendarmes injured by the evening of October 18, seven of them in a critical condition.
One protester died. The heaviest damage was in Limoges, central France, where rioters forced their way into the 1883 town hall and set it alight, bringing down the bell tower.
Commerce Minister Serge Papin said at least 3,000 businesses had been looted or damaged. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ordered localised curfews and held crisis talks on October 19, with a state of emergency still on the table.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez offered to resign over the policing of the marches and Macron refused. The disorder followed weeks of blockades and fires in French schools that began in September.
Similar scenes have since played out elsewhere in the European Union, with shops looted and police attacked in Milan on two consecutive nights.
Macron must stand down in 2027 after two terms and the riots have already been folded into the contest to succeed him. National Rally president Jordan Bardella called the President’s address cowardly.
