Paris mayor pushes back against Trump and ‘Jim’

• Speaking at the annual Conservative Poli tical Action Conference on Friday, President Donald Trump told a story of a friend named “Jim” who was apparently too scared to return to Paris, despite his long tradition of visiting the French capital.

The comments appeared to be the latest broadside from the U. S. president toward European immigration policies. Last weekend, he repeatedly referred to a terrorist attack in Sweden — prompting a confused and at-times angry response from Swedes themselves since there had been no attack.

Shortly after Trump made his comments at CPAC, Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo released a number of tweets citing figures that showed that in the first period of 2017, U. S. tourist visits to Paris were up 30 per cent over last year.

In a subsequent tweet, Hidalgo posed with Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse characters from Disneyland Paris.

Trump had told the audience at CPAC on Friday that his friend Jim, “a very, very substantial guy,” had told him he had not been back to Paris for the past four or five years, “he wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Trump said of his friend, whose full identity is not clear. “Now he doesn’t even think in terms of going there.”