Trump Press Secretary’s Attempt to Slam France Over Statue of Liberty Demand Backfires, Eliciting Furious Backlash Over ‘Shocking and Insulting’ Remarks
In comments that demonstrated historical and diplomatic ignorance, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday told France, America’s oldest ally, it should be “very grateful” to the United States that it isn’t speaking German right now.
The president’s 28-year-old mouthpiece was responding to comments over the weekend by a French politician, Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of Europe’s Parliament, who told reporters, “We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty.’”
Glucksmann was referring to the administration’s purge of the Department of Health and Human Services. Thousands of scientists and public health leaders have been dismissed, and research grants have been slashed.
France, he said, would be happy to absorb America’s research sector. The statue, U.S. property, is unlikely to go.
“We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it,” Glucksmann said, tongue in cheek, according to Politico. “So it will be just fine here at home.”
France presented the Statue of Liberty to the U.S. in 1886 to commemorate the United States centennial of independence and the friendship between the two countries. The famous quote featured on Lady Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” seems at odds with the Trump administration’s unduly harsh treatment of migrants.
Glucksmanns said Trump’s re-election signaled America no longer represented the principles on which it was founded.
Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy asked Leavitt, “They want the Statue of Liberty back. So, is President Trump going to send the Statue of Liberty back to France?”
“Absolutely not, and my advice to that unnamed, low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,” an indignant Leavitt replied. “So they should be very grateful to our great country.”
Leavitt failed to mention that, without France’s intervention during the Revolutionary War, the United States would have likely remained a British colony. The French Navy was instrumental in helping colonial forces outlast British troops. And the treaty to end the war was inked in Paris.
But history is irrelevant to the Trump administration, which seems to relish any opportunity to alienate America’s traditional allies.
“Such a shocking, insulting statement about an ally from anyone, let alone a senior White House official,” former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul posted on X. “Who told her to say this? She obviously got in from somewhere. Im hope our @PressSec knows that it’s only because of the French that we have an independent United States of America.”
Leavitt’s comments also show a simplistic knowledge of how the liberation of France unfolded during World War II. United States forces were aided by the Allies and the French Resistance, and it was British prime minister Winston Churchill who pushed hardest for opening multiple fronts in France that ultimately yielded military victory.
“The arrogance and entitlement are staggering,” one X user wrote of Leavitt’s remarks.
MAGA, of course, delighted in Leavitt’s barroom retort.
“It’s just the truth,” one Trump supporter declared. “If they can insult us by asking for a statue back, we can point out the reality is that they surrendered to the Germans and without the US there would be no France.”
