The French president rebuked unsubstantiated attempts to link looting and violence to immigration.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday hit out at the “unacceptable and stupid comments from many foreign leaders” in the aftermath of unrest which rocked several French cities over the weekend.
“Some people have claimed that we’ve been overrun by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false,” Macron told reporters during a trip to Qatar. His comments were a clear swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump, who this week railed that France is “being conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and Communists.”
While hundreds of thousands of protesters in France demonstrated peacefully over the cost of living and school conditions at the weekend, the mayhem — including public buildings being set on fire, stores being looted and clashes with riot police — sparked widespread condemnation in France and abroad, including in the U.S., where Trump is using the French unrest to rally voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
There is no evidence tying last weekend’s incidents in France to immigration.
Macron said Trump is “among” a group of political leaders who are campaigning “off of France’s back,” adding, “it’s at times like these that you can tell who loves France and who doesn’t.”
Right-leaning leaders in other European countries like Hungary and Poland also tried to pin the unrest in France on immigration to justify their countries’ hard-line policies on the divisive issue. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said on X that the chaos that engulfed several French cities makes it “clear to everyone why Hungary advocates the strictest possible approach to migration.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot responded by offering to “assist the countries concerned in understanding the situation, to prevent them from spreading or relaying false information.”
“Foreign leaders who comment on or exploit recent events in France for electoral purposes or to harm us — without understanding anything about them — should show at least a basic measure of restraint,” he added.
Far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen is still ahead of the pack, and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon remains in a close race for second place.
The government faces criticism it failed to adequately prepare for the violence that played out alongside mass protests.
The French government has been accused of mismanaging and underestimating the demonstrations, which turned into cross-country mayhem on Saturday.
The leftist candidate also doubled down on a proposal to write off a chunk of the French debt.