Calling Paris no longer safe after terror attacks in Paris and Nice Feb. 24 at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Convention, 70-year-old President Doanld Trump irked Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Francois Hollande. With 10% of the $2.5 trillion French economy based on tourism, Trump’s critique of Paris strikes where it hurts. “Paris is no longer Paris,” Trump told CPAC yesterday, prompting strong reactions from Hidalgo and Hollande. “There is terrorism and we must fight it together. I think that it is never good to show the smallest defiance toward an allied country . . .” said Socialist Hollande, finding himself in a reelection dogfight against conservative National Front candidate Marine Le Pen who’s been gaining in national polls. Le Pen’s warned French citizens about Hollande’s liberal refugee policies creating domestic terrorism.
Trump’s point is that France’s immigration problems stem from years of socialist policies, herding North African and Mideast refugees into French suburbs. Hollande and Paris Mayor Hidalgo know about the periodic rioting and violence from disenfranchised refugee groups. What happened with the Jan. 7, 2015 Charlie Hebdo newspaper massacre killing 12, injuring 11 involved terrorism orchestrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. More recent Bastille Day terrorist attacks Nov. 15, 2015 at the Bataclan Theater and around Paris killing 137, injuring 438 and the July 14, 2016 Nice ISIS truck-ramming incident killing 87, injuring 434 prove that Hollande has no answer for how to stop more terrorism. “. . . I wouldn’t do it with the United States and I’m urging the U.S. president not to do it with France,” said Hollande, referring to Trump commenting publicly about Paris safety.
Hollande’s been a fervent supporter of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal Mideast and North African refugee policy in European Union. Hollande does nothing for France independently of the EU, whose open-door immigration policies have gotten France and Germany into trouble. When an ISIS terrorist drove a truck in the Breitsheidplatz Christmas market Dec. 19, 2016, Merkel’s immigration policies backfired. Faced with reelection this year, Merkel’s got a lot of explaining to do, especially about her change-of-heart on open-door refugee policies. Trump’s attempt to impose a Jan. 27 travel ban on seven Mideast and North African countries tried to prevent the kind of open-door immigration policies that led to terror attacks in France and Germany. Faced with criticism by Le Pen, Hollande finds himself under the gun in his 2017 reelection bid.
Taking a swipe at the U.S. Second Amendment, Hollande boasted that French citizens aren’t allowed to possess guns. “I won’t make comparisons but here, people don’t have access to guns. Here you don’t have people with guns opening fire on the crowd simply for the satisfaction of causing drama and tragedy,” said Hollande, refuting Trump’s public criticism. Trump argued during the campaign that had French citizens had guns at the Bataclan theater, it would have been easier to neutralize the assailants. Hollande brings up widely publicized non-terrorism gun violence in the U.S. to divert attention away from France’s terror problems. Promising to retaliate against ISIS for the Paris and Nice terror attacks, Hollande has done little to confront ISIS on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria. Hollande likes the U.S. to do the heavy lifting when it comes to battling terrorism.
Pressure from Merkel in the European union to take more Mideast and North African refugees created a backlash in EU states like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, refusing to conform. Merkel’s relentless pressure to on EU states to take more refugees prompted Great Britain’s June 23, 2017 Brexit vote. Brexit advocate Nigel Farage, head of the U.K.’s Indpendent Party, predicted Trump’s victory Nov. 8, seeing parallels of what propelled the Brexit vote. Because Trump backed the Brexit vote, he has few friends in the Brussels-based EU, the world’s biggest bureaucracy. Britain paid the EU 12.9 billion pounds after rebates or about $15 billion. Whatever benefits to EU membership, voters backing Brexit thought the costs outweighed the benefits. With all the pressure to take Mideast and North African refugees, British voters finally said enough-was-enough
Insulted by Trump’s public remarks about Paris safety, Hidalgo said Paris tourism has never been better. Reacting to Trump’s comments that “Paris is no longer Paris,” Hollande and Hidalgo refuted the idea that the city’s no longer safe. “American tourist reservations are up 30% in 2017 so far compared to last year,” said Hidalgo, not saying how far tourism went down in 2016 after terror attacks. “Three-and-a-half-million visited France in 2016,” tweeted French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. Ayrault didn’t admit that Hollande’s policy of supporting the six-year-old Saudi proxy war in Syria has contributed to the EU’s refugee crisis, leading to terrorism in Paris, Nice and Brussels. “Take a look a what’s happened in France. Take a look at Nice and Paris,” Trump told delegates the CPAC convention. Trump’s public comments stir outrage in Paris because there’s truth to his concerns.
