Parisians brave the rain to protest Trump
PARIS — President Donald Trump’s visit to Paris for the Armistice Day centennial commemorations wasn’t without its share of protests.
The first occurred Sunday morning, as the presidential motorcade glided up the iconic Champs Elysees, arguably the grandest thoroughfare in the French capital, for the ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. As Trump approached the monument, a topless woman ran toward the motorcade.
On her chest were the words “Fake Peacemaker.”
Police apprehended her as she came within several feet of the vehicles. Femen, a French radical feminist group, later asserted responsibility for the stunt.
“FEMEN believes that restoring world peace with those who are responsible for the ongoing wars is hypocritical. How could they work for peace?” the group said in a statement.
On the other side of town, in the symbolic Place de la Republique, a bigger, planned protest took place.
Although nowhere close to the size of the recent London demonstrations against Trump, the group of hundreds of left-wing activists, students and neighborhood residents braved the cold November rain to voice anger with Trump’s policies.
The U.S. president is deeply unpopular in France, where 65 percent of voters view him in a negative light, according to a poll by the Odoxa agency for the Figaro newspaper that was released last week.
Some of those gathered in Paris expressed disgust with the White House’s policy of separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“No human is illegal. No human should be illegal,” said Dario Fabejanac, 37, who said he works with people with disabilities. Trump has “made America and the world a less safe place than it was before he was elected. We don’t want him here,” Fabejanac said.