President Donald Trump said Paris will become a “Muslim city” soon if France doesn’t close its borders to immigrants.
His comments come as hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters continue rioting in the Parisian streets.
Trump said he warned French President Emmanuel Macron about civil unrest, which the Republican tied to the European nation’s immigration policies.
“I told him a long time ago, ‘You’re making a big mistake in France,’” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Monday. “You’re letting everybody from the world come in. The whole world was coming in, and you know, as you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal.”
“I told Emmanuel, ‘You should close up your borders, and let’s see.’ I’ve known him for probably eight or nine years,” Trump said, referencing the start of their relationship during his first term. “I told him as soon as I met him, I said, ‘You’re making a big mistake.’ We closed our borders. He didn’t, and you know what? His borders are a problem.”
In the wake of the riots, Macron called for order and tasked Interior Minister Laurent Nunez with heading a security and intelligence review to prevent future riots. Nunez offered to resign, but Macron rejected it.
Though mass violence erupted in Paris and other French cities over the weekend, peaceful protests over the country’s education system started in late September. Demonstrators were primarily protesting poor conditions in schools before the movement expanded nationwide over frustration with surging living costs and energy prices.
Trump boiled down the civil unrest to immigration rather than education or any other issue.
“What’s happening in France has to do with immigration, not schools, not anything,” he said. “It’s immigration, and I told President Macron, ‘Close up your borders.… You’re going to have nothing but trouble.’ And they’ve got a lot of trouble. They let people into their country that don’t love their country. They don’t love their buildings. They don’t love their art.”
The president concluded that the French government “ruined their country,” but he hopes the country “will come back” from the social problem.
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Vice President JD Vance also blamed immigration from developing nations for France’s riots on social media, sharing a video of a historic French building burning in Limoges.
“Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” Vance wrote. “They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen. I pray that France, a beautiful country of amazing people, will stop this madness before more of its landmarks burn.”