Donald Trump, who never met a foreigner, much less a foreign country, he didn't feel a pathologicial need to insult, thinks France has gone to the chiens.
Last week, the reliably rambling Republican presidential nominee managed to segue from a question on his relationship with Vladimir Putin into a blanket condemnation of la République – which, you have to admit, takes a certain genius.
That, or a frightening lack of discipline of thought. But given that he's come this far, you can no longer rule out the genius possibility.
Asked how, as U.S. president, he would deal with his Russian counterpart, who may or may not have been involved in hacking Democratic National Committee e-mails, Mr. Trump said it would "be nice" if the two countries "actually got along" so they could join forces to destroy the Islamic State. Then he went on a rant about France.
"You see what happened to the French priest?" Mr. Trump asked. "A friend of mine, he said he was going to France, like three, four months ago. I saw him yesterday. I said, 'How'd you like France?' He said, 'I wouldn't go to France.' Because France is no longer France. They won't like me for saying that, but you see what happened in Nice, you see what happened with the priest."
Mr. Trump is rarely factual about much, but this time he was bang-on about one thing: The French were très outrés. Many took to social media to refute his suggestion that the omnipresent threat of terrorism had changed the very essence of a country whose lifestyle is so envied it has long reigned as the world's top tourist destination. For the French, defending that reputation is more than a matter of pride. Plenty of fric is at stake.
Tourism accounts for more than 7 per cent of France's gross domestic product and, at least until this year, it had been one of the rare growth sectors in an otherwise moribund economy. A record 84.5 million foreigners visited France in 2015, despite the fact the year was bookended by terrorist attacks that shook the country to its core. But this year's numbers won't be so rosy.
The January, 2015, attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and November's massacre of Paris café patrons and concert goers, along with last month's Bastille Day attack in Nice, have taken their toll. Hotel and flight reservations are down as much 20 per cent this year. And it will only get worse. Last week's killing of a Roman Catholic priest in Normandy seemed to imply that no corner of the country is safe.
Still, Mr. Trump may have done the French a backhanded favour by adding his two cents (his input is hardly worth more) to the current debate. Terrorism has put France on tenterhooks and led to a poisoning of public discourse as politicians on the right pressure President François Hollande's government to beef up security measures, even if it means trampling on the constitutional rights of French citizens. If anything would render France a shadow of its noble self, it would be sacrificing the principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité for some false sense of security.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking to regain his old job in next year's elections, has called for, at a minimum, placing electronic monitoring bracelets on all of the more than 10,000 French residents on a terrorism watch list. Mr. Sarkozy thinks the most worrisome suspects flagged by police and intelligence authorities should be held in detention centres under preventive arrest – even if it requires changing the French constitution's ban on arbitrary detainment.
In response to Mr. Trump, Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls launched a Twitter hashtag (#FranceIsStillFrance) and Mr. Hollande insisted: "France will always be France because France never yields and always bears witness to the ideals, values and principles for which we are recognized everywhere in the world."
The Local, a website that reports on life in various European countries, offered a more prosaic rebuttal: "Outside our [Paris] offices, people are playing pétanque by the canal, drinking rosé wine and dipping tomatoes in hummus. The beaches are packed, campsites are full and, if Mr. Trump needed any more proof life in France was continuing as normal, there have been riots in the suburbs and Air France is in the middle of a week-long strike."
Plus ça change, Dieu merci.
Konrad Yakabuski