UPDATE - Trump claims Europe faces collapse unless it addresses immigration

ADDS BACKGROUND

By Rabia Iclal Turan

WASHINGTON (AA) - US President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned that Europe will collapse unless it addresses immigration, pointing to the recent protests in France.

"It’s about immigration,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office when asked by reporters if education could stop the unrest.

“They have to straighten out their act; otherwise, there won’t be a Europe left," he added.

“If you look at what’s going on in France, I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time ... I have never seen anything like that. That wasn’t a little bit of a riot. That wasn’t a little bit of a protest. That was a full-on revolution, and it continues,” he said.

“When you look at France, and it happened in Italy too, smaller scale, but it’s right there. It’s simmering,” Trump said. “You’re going to have to remove those people that are insurrectionists. You’re gonna have to get them out of the country.”

“If you don’t get them out, you’re not going to have a France,” he added.

Asked whether he would endorse Marine Le Pen, a leading figure in France’s far-right National Rally party, in next year’s French presidential election, Trump said: “I don’t know her. I haven’t met her, but I thought she was badly treated.”

“It would look like a weaponization to me when they did what they did,” he said, referring to Le Pen’s March 2025 conviction over embezzling European Parliament funds.

This July, an appeals court cleared her to run in the French presidential election, set for next spring.

France has been gripped by protests since Sept. 18, when high school students began demonstrations and blockades that also spread in lesser form to Belgium, Albania, Greece, and Italy. The movement has since grown into nationwide protests over rising living costs, fuel prices, and education funding.

Around 550,000 people took to the streets on Saturday, as the protests turned violent and government buildings were set on fire, according to French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez. One police officer and one protester were killed, and Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said 1,200 people were arrested.

Rabia İclal Turan