Trump Makes French Protests About Himself, Of Course

By David Boddiger  |  December 8, 2018 | 3:37pm
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In his bid to forever be remembered as the most undiplomatic, ignorant U.S. president in history, Donald Trump weighed in on the French protests Saturday, erroneously linking them to the Paris Agreement and claiming that Parisians “Want Trump!”

Violent protests by thousands of demonstrators referred to as “yellow vests” continued for a fourth straight week on Saturday, with protesters clashing with police, burning vehicles, and ripping down barricades from storefronts in Paris, according to The New York Times and other news media. Riot police used tear gas and water cannons to turn back some of the protesters.

Across the country, tens of thousands of people joined in the demonstrations, which were prompted by a proposed gasoline tax but extended to other economic and social grievances, including low standards of living by poor workers. The French government initially responded by suspending, then canceling, the gasoline tax, but that did not stop the riots.

To date, four people have died and 700 have been injured, according to the Times.

Meanwhile, the U.S. president, who doesn’t like to read his daily intelligence briefings, seemed to take pleasure in France’s ongoing crisis, using it as an opportunity to quench his own narcissistic need for constant adulation by repeating a debunked theory promoted by right-wing nutbags Rush Limbaugh and Charlie Kirk.

“The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment,” Trump tweeted on Saturday. “Chanting ‘We Want Trump!’ Love France.”

Trump announced last year that the U.S. would pull out of the multinational Paris Accords on climate change.

And as you might have guessed, no French protester was chanting, “We want Trump.”

Earlier in the week, Trump retweeted the claim, made by Kirk, who is president of the right-wing “youth organization” Turning Point USA. According to news reports, Kirk probably took it from Limbaugh, who appears to have made it up during a radio program on Monday.

CNN has thoroughly debunked the claim, pointing out that the video Limbaugh, Kirk, and others likely referred to was taken in London. The idiots yelling, “We want Trump,” did so in English, not French.

A CNN report on Tuesday noted:

No video was included in Kirk’s tweet but one circulating among Trump-supporting social media accounts appears to be shot in Trafalgar Square in London. The police in the video are English, an English flag is visible during the start of the video, and the blue, double-decker bus in the shot appears to be operated by a company that does sightseeing tours of London.

But don’t let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy theory.

Trump also took a swipe at Europe on Saturday over NATO funding. “The idea of a European Military didn’t work out too well in W.W. I or 2. But the U.S. was there for you, and always will be. All we ask is that you pay your fair share of NATO. Germany is paying 1% while the U.S. pays 4.3% of a much larger GDP – to protect Europe. Fairness!” he tweeted.

One has to wonder if in Donald’s deluded mind, or what’s left of it, this might be payback for that time not long ago when French President Emmanuel Macron called Trump out in front of the entire world.

During an Armistice Day speech at Paris’ Arc de Triomphe in November, Macron warned that, “The old demons are rising again, ready to complete their task of chaos and of death.”

He added that, “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism,” and, “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism.”

The point of that message seems to have gone over Trump’s head.

 
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