WASHINGTON — President Trump predicted Monday that Paris would become “a Muslim city very soon” as he accused immigrants of causing a shocking wave of rioting and looting.
Trump urged French President Emmanuel Macron to reduce migration into the country and “take those bad people out” — in apparent reference to his own mass-deportation campaign in the US.
“I told him a long time ago, ‘You’re making a big mistake in France. You’re letting everybody from the world come in. The whole world was coming in,’” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a campaign rally in Kansas.
“As you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal. That wasn’t the deal. I told Emmanuel, ‘You should close up your borders.’”
Trump said he’s urged Macron to end mass migration into France for years, saying, “His borders are a problem.”
Trump made the remark about Paris when a reporter asked about Macron blaming his nation’s discontent on the US leader’s war with Iran, which increased global fuel costs.
“If Europe doesn’t close its borders and bring the criminals out, like the people that are protesting, Europe is finished. Europe has to close its borders, like I’ve been telling them for 10 years,” Trump added.
“They have to close their borders and they have to take people that hate their countries out because otherwise they’re finished. They will not have a chance of survival,” he went on.
Mass protests began in France last month over school conditions and have broadened to focus on the cost of living and inflation. On Saturday, about 500,000 people protested across France before smaller groups looted as many as 2,000 stores, attacked police and started fires across the country.
Footage of the protests show looters and rioters from various racial groups.
About 10% of France is Muslim, with a slightly higher percentage in Paris, and are largely from formerly French-ruled parts of Africa and the Middle East.
Trump said France needs to take out immigrants who “hate the country. They hate the buildings. They hate the people. They hate the art. They have to close their borders and they have to take those bad people out.”
Marine Le Pen, the populist conservative presidential candidate in France’s April election, has tempered criticism of Muslims as a whole, writing on X Thursday, ahead of the surge in violence, that “Islam is compatible with the Republic; I’ve said it ten times.”
Trump on Oct. 6 said that the mounting protests were about “Islam wanting to take over a once great Country.”
