Trump tells France to close its borders, and predicts Paris will be a Muslim city very soon

A reporter asked the president about Emmanuel Macron blaming part of France’s anger on fuel costs from the war with Iran. Trump answered with France’s borders.

“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 said on Monday as he left the White House for 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.’”

“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,” he said. “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.” France, he said, needs to remove immigrants who “hate the country. They hate the buildings. They hate the people. They hate the art.” Earlier on Monday he had posted on Truth Social urging France to close the borders, fast, and saying the migrants have taken over France.

The remarks land in a French argument that is already running at full volume. About 500,000 people marched across France on Saturday in protests that began over school conditions and grew into a revolt over the cost of living, and smaller groups then looted stores, attacked police and set fires in city after city. About ten percent of France is Muslim, with a higher share in Paris, most of them immigrants from formerly French ruled parts of Africa and the Middle East or their descendants. Inside French politics, the leading conservative candidate for the April presidential election, Marine Le Pen, has been more careful than the American president: she wrote on X last week that Islam is compatible with the Republic and that she has said it ten times. On October 6, before the worst of the violence, Trump had already said the mounting protests were about Islam wanting to take over a once great country. On Monday he said the same thing louder, and named the city.