USA TODAY International Edition
Trump gets cold welcome from residents in Paris
They assail president’s policies, personal style
PARIS – Charlotte DeLeon is enjoying a beer with friends at a small bar near the Denfert-Rochereau Metro, but this is not a particularly happy hour for her.
After all, Donald Trump is in town. “Of course, all the French hate him,” the 22-year-old business school student told a visitor, outlining a list of complaints that ran from Trump’s attitude toward migrants to his comments about women.
One of her friends, Thomas Rouault, 22, disputed the part about ALL the French.
“No, no, no!” Rouault said – not that he particularly likes Trump. But he said he and others in France “like what he is doing in the United States” in terms of jobs and economic growth.
Trump received a cold welcome this week from Parisians who don’t like his views on immigration and climate change, and aren’t crazy about his boisterous style, either.
But the protests did seem more muted compared with the president’s visit in 2017.
Some Paris residents noted that Trump was more a focus last year because he was a special guest of French President Emmanuel Macron at the annual Bastille Day parade.
This time, Trump was among more than 60 world leaders attending events marking the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended World War I. Paris has paid more attention to the solemn war memorial than to the American president.
Some Parisians acknowledged that Democratic presidents such as Barack Obama tend to be more popular with them than Republican ones because of their left-leaning politics. They also said there’s something about Trump – the avatar of an “America First” foreign policy who has clashed with Macron and threatened to pull support from the NATO military alliance – that really drives the French up a wall.
At an outdoor table at Cafe de Paris, not far from the Arc de Triomphe, 25year-old Alice Marty criticized Trump for saying that a caravan of migrants from Central America, fleeing their home countries to escape poverty, violence and corruption, planned “an invasion” of the United States.
“I just don’t like him,” said Marty, who grew up in Paris but now lives in Berlin. “I think he’s really rude ... with regard to women, disrespectful.”