“Don’t Frenchify our America”: the Trump clan seizes the violence in France

Donald Trump, in poor shape before the American mid-term elections due to high inflation, sees the violence in France as an opportunity to amplify his anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric. At a meeting in Kansas, the American president began with a long discussion devoted to France, according to him “stormed, pillaged and burned by migrants, jihadists and communists.” “Tell yourself that this is what the Democrats want to do to America,” he said.

The opposition party is now favored to take control of one or even both chambers of Congress from the Republicans on November 3, due to growing dissatisfaction among voters with the high cost of living. “Since the start of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement, Europe has been an extension of the battlefield of American domestic politics. It is therefore not surprising that, when there are events such as the violence of October 17, the machine wakes up,” analyzes Justin Vaïsse, historian specializing in the United States and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

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On Monday, one of the first messages from the American president on his Truth Social network was: “Migrants have conquered France. They need to CLOSE THE BORDERS, AND FAST.” He campaigned in 2024, including spreading racist misinformation, on an aggressive agenda to combat illegal immigration. If the Republican leader closed the border with Mexico and launched massive expulsion operations, he has not kept his other flagship promise, that of increasing the purchasing power of Americans, which has earned him growing unpopularity.

“Don’t Frenchify our America”

Hence the temptation to shift the debate to the area of identity. The president and his entourage “are seizing the French crisis and making it a campaign argument,” JC Lintzenich, an international relations expert associated with the German Marshall Fund, told AFP. Célia Belin, director of the French office of the European Council on International Relations, for her part, reads it above all as an “export of domestic policy” from the United States, on the part of an administration which openly supports nationalist parties in Europe.

Donald Trump and his representatives “rushed into this argument which is the one that (JD) Vance presented in Munich” in a much-commented speech in 2025, that of a “cultural war against Europe”, with the desire to “blow on the embers”, explains the researcher to AFP. The American vice-president was also one of the first to react, writing on Saturday on

The president's eldest son, Don Jr., made similar comments about X. “Don’t ‘Frenchize’ our America,” he said. “The riots are seen as a validation of the warning against immigration in general and Muslim immigration, if such a thing exists,” explains Justin Vaïsse.

According to a recent Pew Research poll, 82% of voters believe that the economy plays a very important role in their choice, far ahead of immigration (59%) or issues related to race (36%).