PARIS — The greatest act of friendship in modern diplomacy was performed Saturday night by a man 5,900 kilometers away with a dry lawn.
“FRANCE IS BURNING!” President Donald Trump posted, in a sentence French translators worked through the night to render, correctly, as “La France brûle!” He then added the part the French press printed in full: “The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country. Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!”
Around 550,000 people had marched across France on Saturday about the price of living, the state of the schools, and — in a detail the French press reported with the seriousness it deserves — the lice and the toilets in the public schools. In Limoges, masked protesters set fire to the 19th-century town hall, a building completed in 1876 that survived two World Wars and did not survive Saturday. More than 1,200 people were arrested and over 500 police officers were injured in the worst unrest in years.
The advice arrived at the speed of a missile. Vice President JD Vance: “Western liberals imported the Third World into France in the name of diversity… They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation.”
Gérard Fontaine, deputy prefect of the Lozère — a man who has never been asked a question he liked — has spent the weekend fielding calls from American journalists, and he has a message.
“Let me be clear about the friendship,” Fontaine said. “We have the burning. They have the opinions. It is not an even trade.”
He said the American commentary arrived “with a kindness we can only describe as total.” He noted that the United States has “a great deal of experience advising countries on problems they do not have,” and called the vice president’s remarks “a masterpiece of a genre we did not know America practiced, which is foreign policy by text message.”
Asked whether France would adopt the advice, Fontaine said the interior ministry was “studying the lawn.”
President Emmanuel Macron, addressing the nation Monday evening, admitted “failures in anticipation and intelligence,” and rejected the resignation offer of his own interior minister, Laurent Nuñez — a move French commentators are calling the most French sentence ever written. Macron promised to ban gatherings near major public buildings where needed.
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon demanded €10 billion for the schools. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen said France was “caught in a vice, or even taken hostage, between violence and powerlessness.” Both are running for president in the spring. Both are running against the same week.
Drone footage out of Limoges shows the town hall roof caved in, the 19th-century stone open to the sky. The building survived the Germans. It did not survive the comments.
Macron is expected to address the nation again on Tuesday. The lawn in Bedminster is dry.