French official knocks ‘shameful’ Trump administration after Statue of Liberty remarks

Raphaël Glucksmann, a center-left French politician, slammed the Trump administration as “shameful” after it pushed back against his call for the Statue of Liberty to be returned to France.

In a thread on social platform X, Glucksmann addressed the American people shortly after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called him a “low-level” lawmaker and told his country to be grateful for the U.S. involvement in World War II.

“Dear Americans, Since the White House press secretary is attacking me today, I wanted to tell you this,” Glucksmann's post began.

“Our two people are intimately linked by History, the blood we shed and the passion for freedom we share, a passion symbolized by this Statue that was offered to the United States by France to honor your glorious Revolution,” he said of the Statue of Liberty.

Glucksmann called for the statue to be returned to France because he said the U.S. no longer represents the values it championed that prompted France to gift it.

The French politician is a vocal supporter of Ukraine and was speaking out against the Trump administration’s recent slashing of federal programs and its mass deportation plan.

The Statue of Liberty has become an iconic American symbol since it was gifted in 1886 to commemorate the relationship between the countries, the U.S. revolution and the melting pot of immigrants that made up the country.

Leavitt slammed Glucksmann during a press briefing Monday, arguing that he and his people should be “very grateful” to the U.S. because they are “not speaking German right now.”

In his post online in response to Leavitt’s remarks, Glucksmann noted that the French were aided by the U.S. and went a step further by saying, “I would simply not be here if hundreds of thousands of young Americans had not landed on our beaches in Normandy.”

“Our gratitude to these heroes and their sacrifices is therefore eternal,” he wrote. “But the America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin. It helped the resistance and didn’t attack Zelensky.”

“It celebrated science and didn’t fire researchers for using banned words. It welcomed the persecuted and didn’t target them,” Glucksmann’s posts continued. “It was far, so far from what your current president does, says and embodies.”

Glucksmann noted that Europe is counting on the U.S. to “rise again.” He said he is “petrified by Trump’s betrayal” of U.S. values and intended his call for France to revoke the statue as a wake-up call.

"No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone,” he wrote. “And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe.”

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