As Kansans waited for President Donald Trump to arrive at his rally in Wichita this week, they were treated to a new addition to the pre-show schedule: footage of this weekend’s violent protests in France, much of it taken from Fox News, broadcast on big screens.
That the unrest was taking place 4,700 miles from the Heartland Credit Union Arena seemed irrelevant to the point Trump and his team were trying to make. That could happen here, Trump would later warn his supporters, if Democrats win the midterms in November.
“When you see bell towers burning and raging fires in France, just remember that this is what radical ‘democrats’ want to do to America,” he said Monday.
France, he claimed, was being “conquered, pillaged and burned by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity” and “Western civilization itself”.
This is a theme the president has already announced he will return to on Tuesday evening in North Carolina. With an ever-narrowing window for the harsh political winds to turn, Trump and the Republicans have seized on the violence to make their final arguments to American voters. For some Trump advisers, the unrest feels like a bit of an “October surprise” that some say could help improve the bleak prospects of victory in just two weeks.
The burned cars, graffiti and looted stores are all warning signs, they warned, and the inevitable result of the liberal policies – particularly on immigration – that they have warned against for years.
There is little evidence that the violence in France over the weekend was carried out by illegal immigrants or immigrants of any kind. The protests began as a student movement demanding better funding and improvements in schools. Unions and other groups have united to protest the high cost of living and record fuel prices.
What led to the violent scenes is a matter of controversy among French political leaders and has given rise to a range of criticism.
Trump, along with right-wing leaders in France, used the stage to accuse French President Emmanuel Macron and other European centrists of failing to rein in uncontrolled migration from the Middle East and Africa.
“Our country is caught in a vice… between violence and powerlessness,” said Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, suggesting that only her firm hand could restore order to Macron’s “chaos.”
Le Pen, who is running in the presidential election for the far-right National Rally party, has sought to inject the issue of migration into the debate, blaming the violence on criminals in France. suburbspoor urban areas where a large part of the country’s migrant population lives.
Protests in France turn violent
Trump did not say Tuesday whether he would support Le Pen in next year’s election, where she is leading the field. But he nevertheless appeared to echo her arguments and insisted that Macron had ignored her advice to crack down on immigration.
“Some people think it’s a little controversial. I don’t care,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office. “It’s an immigration problem. We have people who have flocked to France, and they haven’t been controlled either, without control, like with (President Joe) Biden when he was doing it. We don’t do that.”
Earlier in the day, he specifically invoked “what’s happening in France” in promising that the spending of foreign money he oversees will reach $400 million by Election Day.
It may be too early to say whether Trump’s decision to appropriate images of France will have a decisive effect on American midterm voters. Most say their main concerns are the high cost of living and that Trump’s immigration agenda has become unpopular, with the majority of Americans saying in polls that his administration has gone too far in expelling undocumented immigrants from the United States.
Trump, however, has appeared irritated by recommendations from political advisers that he not mention immigration as much as he is rather hesitant toward Republican candidates. As he shines the spotlight on the situation in Europe, he has once again placed the hard line on immigration at the center of his argument.
“If you want to see what’s at stake in this election,” Trump said menacingly Monday in Kansas, “just look at what’s happening in France.”
Other Republicans followed suit. Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that immigration was to blame for the violence.
“Western liberals imported the Third World to France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” he wrote in an article featuring video of the fire that destroyed the historic city hall of Limoges, the central French city famous for its porcelain. “They ignored the fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. »
Trump on Tuesday referred approvingly to Vance’s position in the Oval Office and insisted that concerns about education or costs were not behind the scenes of unrest.
“It’s not about education. It’s about immigration,” he said. “It’s about illegal immigration who, deep down, hate France. They hate people. They hate everything.”
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