Hollande responds to Trump’s remarks concerning security in Paris
French President Francois Hollande has called on Donald Trump to show support for his allies after the US president made negative remarks on the security situation in Paris.
“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. I wouldn’t do it with the United States and I’m urging the US president not to do it with France,” said Hollande during the annual agriculture fair in Porte de Versailles on Saturday.
Since early 2015, over 230 people have died in a series of attacks in France, the country has also been kept in a state of emergency since November 2015.
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“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,” added Hollande.
On Friday, Trump told the annual conservative CPAC convention in Maryland that one of his friends no longer visits the French capital as it has become so dangerous.
“Take a look at what’s happened in France. I have a friend, he’s a very, very substantial guy, he loves the city of lights. He loves Paris. Hadn’t seen him in a while,” he said. “And I said, ‘Jim, let me ask you a question, how’s Paris doing?’ ‘Paris? I don’t go there anymore. Paris is no longer Paris,” he added.
“Take a look at what’s happening to our world folks and we have to be smart. We have to be smart. We can’t let it happen to us,” he noted.
French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Marc Ayrault also responded to Trump’s remarks noting that 3.5 million American tourists had visited France in 2016.
Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo also responded to the US president’s remarks by releasing a series of tweets which showed that since the beginning of 2017 the number of US citizens who had visited Paris had increased by over 30 percent since 2016.
Trump’s remarks came in the wake of other comments about the security situation in Sweden and Germany. Last week, he linked an imaginary rise in violence and a nonexistent terror attack in Sweden to the intake of refugees.
