WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday blamed mass student protests in France on “mass migration” and Islam, pushing his global right-wing narrative ahead of tough midterm elections at home.
“What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
French students have blocked the entrances to hundreds of high schools across the country since late September to demand better conditions, in protests that have descended into sporadic clashes with security forces.
A quarter of a million demonstrators took to the streets across France on Tuesday.
But Trump and his administration have long blamed European social issues on migration, calling on Europe to shut its borders and echoing far-right parties by warning of what they call civilizational decline.
Leading voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement have been using the French protests to ram home points about immigration ahead of the US midterm elections next month.
MAGA commentators have repeatedly posted videos of the French unrest, with Trump ally Glenn Beck saying on Monday that the “riots in France are a clear warning to the rest of the West.”
Republicans are doubling down on migration and anti-transgender rhetoric amid fears that Trump’s unpopularity and his Iran war risk losing them control of Congress.
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