A French European parliament member has quipped that the US should return the Statue of Liberty, which it received as a gift from France about 140 years ago, after Donald Trump’s decision “to side with the tyrants” against Ukraine.
Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, then responded to Raphaël Glucksmann on Monday by calling him an “unnamed low-level French politician” and saying the US would keep the statue.
Taunting France’s conquest by Nazi Germany during the second world war before the allied forces – including the US – then defeated the Nazis, Leavitt added: “It’s only because of America that the French are not speaking German right now.” She also said France “should be very grateful to our great country”.
Glucksmann, of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, kicked off the exchange when – evidently with his tongue in his cheek – he said it appeared to him that the US had come to “despise” the statue as well as what it symbolizes.
“So, it will be just fine here at home,” Glucksmann said.
Glucksmann also referred to a crackdown on “scientific freedom” in the US in his remarks at a party convention, first reported by Agence France-Presse.
His comments amount to a verbal protest after Trump suspended military aid and intelligence gathering on Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to strong-arm its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the negotiations to end the war started by Russia, which invaded in February 2022.
The US president upbraided Zelenskyy during a televised diplomatic meltdown in the Oval Office on 28 February, which caused significant alarm across Europe for appearing to signal that the Trump administration generally favors Russia in the conflict. The US later restored military aid, but on Monday it was reported the US was withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine.
Trump and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, for whom the US president has repeatedly expressed admiration, are tentatively scheduled to talk on Tuesday over the phone about ending the war in Ukraine.
Glucksmann’s remarks additionally nodded to Elon Musk’s brutal staffing and spending cuts to the US federal government, which have affected numerous health and climate research workers. Glucksmann said France could be in a position to benefit if any of the fired workers emigrated.
“If you want to fire your best researchers, if you want to fire all the people who, through their freedom and their sense of innovations, their taste for doubt and research, have made your country the world’s leading power, then we’re going to welcome them,” said Glucksmann.
“Give us back the Statue of Liberty. We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty.’ We gave it to you as a gift.”
France did indeed present the 305ft-tall, 450,000lb Statue of Liberty to the US in Paris on 4 July 1884, the 108th anniversary of the American declaration of independence from the UK. The US needed crucial military aid from France to win its revolutionary war and gain independence from the UK.
Nicknamed “Lady Liberty”, the torch-bearing statue – designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi of France – was then installed on an island in New York City’s harbor and dedicated in 1886. There is a smaller copy of the statue on an island in the Seine river in Paris.
A bronze plaque on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal contains the words of a poem titled The New Colossus, which overtly references the large number of immigrants who arrived in the US in the 19th century and partially reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”
Trump has been aggressively pursuing the deportation of immigrants. Recently, his administration deported a Brown University medical professor to Lebanon, despite her having a valid US work visa and a judge’s order not to do so.
Prosecutors reportedly alleged that the professor had recently attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among other things.
The US also recently deported to El Salvador more than 250 people whom the White House accused of belonging to Venezuelan and Salvadorian gangs, despite a judge’s order halting the flight.
David Smith contributed reporting
