Macron criticizes foreign leaders including Trump for comments linking migrants to France's unrest
French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking to reporters while visiting Doha, Qatar on Wednesday, pushed back against comments from foreign leaders — including U.S. President Donald Trump — that attributed ongoing unrest in France to migrants. Macron said there was "no visible foreign interference" in the protests but accused foreign officials of engaging in "foreign manipulation of information." Protests that began in September over education and cost-of-living concerns have since spread into nationwide rioting, with more than 2,000 people arrested in a single weekend.
Two sources · Thin corroboration
Weeks of protests and rioting in France, which began in September as demonstrations over education and the cost of living, have drawn commentary from officials abroad — commentary that Macron directly addressed Wednesday. Speaking from Doha, the French president said those attributing the unrest to migrants and Islamists were spreading falsehoods, and that such statements amounted to "unacceptable and stupid comments" from people who, in his words, "don't love our country."
On Monday, Trump wrote that France was being "conquered, looted and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity" and "the Western civilization itself," according to CNN's reporting. Trump offered no evidence for those characterizations. Vice President JD Vance also weighed in on the same day via X, writing that "Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion" and that questions of assimilation had been ignored. Trump referenced Vance's remarks approvingly in the Oval Office on Tuesday, stating that the unrest was "about immigration" rather than education or costs.
Macron did not name Trump or Vance specifically at his press briefing, but he referred to leaders both in Europe and "on the other side of the Atlantic." Hungarian Prime Minister Peter Magyar also linked the violence to immigration policy in a Sunday social media post, urging "the strictest possible approach to migration," also without providing evidence, per CNN.