Trump weighs in on France
‘Cop death will affect election’
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump waded into France’s presidential election, tweeting he expected the killing of a policeman in central Paris to have an impact on tomorrow’s vote.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting late on Thursday of a policeman on the Champs Elysees by a French national who apparently lived in the country’s capital.
“Another terrorist attack in Paris. The people of France will not take much more of this. Will have a big effect on presidential election!” Trump said on Twitter yesterday.
The attack prompted farright presidential candidate Marine Le Pen to say yesterday that France should reinstate border checks and expel foreigners who are on the watch lists of intelligence services.
Le Pen, who has campaigned on an anti-EU, anti-immigration platform, was the only major French candidate who backed Republican Trump in the November 8 US presidential election.
Trump ran for the White House on a pledge to get tough on immigration and his administration has imposed restrictions including a controversial ban, stalled in US courts, on travellers from Muslim majority nations.
In his election campaign, Trump seized on last year’s Brexit vote in the UK as an example of disillusioned voters rising up against the political establishment and forged a friendship with Nigel Farage, a leading campaigner for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
On Thursday, former US president Barack Obama spoke with a different French candidate, Emmanuel Macron, a pro-EU centrist.
Macron is leading most opinion polls for the election’s first round tomorrow and is expected to contest a secondround run-off with Le Pen.
Obama’s spokesperson said the former president, who is popular in France, was not making a formal endorsement.