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You might imagine that, given the imminent midterm elections, a spluttering war in Iran, and his sinking personal approval, Donald Trump has enough to worry about. Not so. The president has been posting prolifically on Truth Social over the past two days about protests in France. “The migrants have taken over France. They must CLOSE THE BORDERS, FAST!” he wrote this morning. Trump’s reactions don’t tell us a great deal about the protests or about French society, but they do reveal three things about Trump.
First, Trump’s favorite mode is punditry. Even as the world’s most powerful man, he frequently seems to prefer watching TV and shooting opinions from the hip to engaging in governance. This explains why he continued to give freewheeling briefings, full of his own speculation and medical advice, while the coronavirus swept the United States in 2020, and it might be one reason he’s fixated on France at a time of political peril for his own party.
Second, and related, Trump can’t resist meddling in other countries’ affairs, engaging in behavior that previous presidents would have concluded was inappropriate. The U.S. government has long worked to covertly influence foreign elections, and in some cases encouraged or fomented coups. But presidents have mostly avoided issuing public endorsements or other interventions in partisan politics overseas, two things Trump loves to do. He endorsed the prime minister of Japan for reelection, backed a right-wing candidate for president of Poland, placed tariffs on Brazil for prosecuting his ally Jair Bolsonaro, and lent his administration’s credibility to the reelection campaign of Hungary’s then-President Viktor Orbán. (Orbán lost.) This weekend, he endorsed embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s blaming of immigrants in France amplifies the platform of National Rally, a far-right party with fascist roots that is ideologically aligned with MAGA and has its best shot yet at capturing the French presidency for the first time next spring.
But U.S. interference abroad tends to produce some pushback. Leaders and voters in sovereign countries may not like a superpower telling them how to live—especially in a nation such as France, which still sees itself as a global player. Apologists might contend that Trump’s meddling in foreign politics is a sign of strength, projecting American power worldwide, but the brush-off Trump received when begging for international assistance in the Persian Gulf showed the cost of treating allies dismissively. Trump’s approach to the protests is notable because for years, he seemed to get along with French President Emmanuel Macron better than with almost any other foreign leader, a bromance sealed with history’s most awkward handshake. Their friendship seems to have cooled more recently, in part because of tariffs and Trump’s antagonism toward Ukraine. (Notably, the Kremlin is also using France’s protests to score political points.)
Third, Trump views all forms of protest—at least those with which he disagrees—as inherently illegitimate. The violence in France warrants concern: This past weekend, the country saw some of its worst riots in decades; shops were looted and landmarks were destroyed as rioters seemed to take advantage of the mass marches. But in his posts on Truth Social, the president does not simply condemn the violence—he suggests that the riots must be the work of foreign seditionists. The protest movement was in fact sparked by domestic concerns, particularly demands for better funding for the nation’s school system. Macron, in contrast to Trump, has said that many protestors have legitimate demands, even as he has fiercely condemned violence, which he blames on “troublemakers from far-left fringe groups.”
Authoritarians see any popular resistance as a danger to their power, which is why the autocratic Russian regime and the aspiring strongman Trump are united in condemning French demonstrations. And as nationalists, they must also blame the danger on outsiders, even though French authorities have not made any link between immigrants and unrest. “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” Vice President Vance posted on X this weekend, along with a clip of the city hall in Limoges, in the old province of Limousin, burning. “They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen.” This was not only a missed opportunity for Vance to blame literal limousine liberals for the riots; it was patently absurd. The French don’t need outsiders to teach them how to rage in the streets. They’ve been doing it for centuries. (Trump, an aficionado of Les Misérables, might not have made this mistake.) To the extent that migrants are involved in these protests, it is proof that they have assimilated fully to the French way of life.
Suggesting that Trump and Vance might be wiser to focus on getting their own house in order than to look overseas would be easy, but it misses the point. This weekend, while Trump was posting about French protests, Americans were participating in thousands of “No Kings” demonstrations around the country and Trump’s “border czar” was insinuating that Ilhan Omar, a Democratic lawmaker who is a naturalized citizen, committed immigration fraud. Trump’s attempts to delegitimize protest and whip up xenophobia aren’t ultimately about France. They’re about the United States.
Related:
- Why Trump turned to the sewer (From 2025)
- The violence sweeping France was never really about schools.
Here are four new stories from The Atlantic:
- Leo J. Wise: How corruption got this bad
- Tom Nichols: America is now an ally of Russia.
- Maine has changed. Susan Collins hasn’t.
- Jonathan Chait: Mamdani is the centrist we’ve been waiting for.
Today’s News
- The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other accused September 11 plotters who are seeking to reinstate a 2024 plea deal that would have given them life sentences. The three men are scheduled to stand trial before a military commission in 2028 and could face the death penalty.
- Yesterday, President Trump defended his decision to ease sanctions and tariffs on Russia, saying the move was intended to keep Moscow at the negotiating table for a peace agreement with Ukraine. He also suggested that the talks included negotiations over the release of a hostage, but he did not identify anyone involved.
- Houthi forces launched three ballistic missiles at a military camp in Yemen’s Shabwa province, killing at least 47 people and injuring at least 53 others, according to Yemeni military officials. The attack comes amid renewed fighting between the Iran-backed group and Yemeni government forces supported by Saudi Arabia.
Dispatches
- The Wonder Reader: Rafaela Jinich explores how to indulge in fall.
Explore all of our newsletters here.
Evening Read
The Minimal Requirements for a Society Free From Fear
By Adam Kirsch
In 1989, the year the West won the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama published an essay announcing “the end of history.” He wasn’t claiming that historic events would stop taking place; what was over, rather, was the debate about the meaning of those events. Since the Enlightenment, Western thinkers had believed that history was progressing toward a final destination. According to communism, the engine of progress was class conflict, and history would end in the creation of a classless society. With the failure of the Soviet empire, Fukuyama argued, this idea had been discredited. Only one alternative remained: It was now clear that the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” was “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” There would still be disagreements within liberalism—Fukuyama named religion and nationalism as likely fault lines—but there could no longer be any disagreement about liberalism.
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- The Permanent Questions: Are we too political?
Culture Break
Read. Sarah Anderson’s latest novel accomplishes what Yesteryear couldn’t, Stephanie Hayes writes. In the corporate satire Fallow, a woman is hired to bear children for executives, and her experience skewers the ideal of “having it all.”
Explore. This may be the golden age of sex toys, Sarah Hepola writes. But relying on the convenience of self-pleasure may also be keeping us “cocooned in a little pod of self-gratification.”
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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