"Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon," U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House lately. He said the unrest in France had to do with immigration, not schools. He gave no figure to support the forecast. However, France's statistics office does publish one on religion: in a survey from 2019 and 2020, about one adult in 10 under the age of 60 in mainland France said their religion was Islam. The survey gives no figure for Paris itself, but one adult in 10 across the mainland is a long way from a Muslim city.

The unrest had other causes. It began in September at a school in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, over a shortage of teachers, and by Oct. 17, it had become a nationwide protest against the cost of living. The next evening, French President Emmanuel Macron traced the anxiety over fuel and living costs, on television, to the conflict in the Persian Gulf. On the day Trump spoke, Macron left for the Gulf to secure energy supplies from Muslim-majority states.

Trump took the protesters' anger over teachers and the cost of living and gave it a different cause. Both of his claims, that Paris is turning Muslim and that immigration caused the revolt, come straight from France's own far-right. Marine Le Pen, whose National Rally (RN) leads the polls for next spring's presidential election, is more careful. The White House says out loud what she leaves unsaid, for voters at home before the midterms. Trump has a record on France, the far-right one on Islam. The cost falls on France's Muslims.

Trump, France since 2017

In February 2017, he told a conservative conference that Paris was no longer Paris. The next day, President François Hollande replied that showing the slightest distrust toward a friendly country is never good.

In 2018, when Trump commented on the yellow-vest protests against fuel taxes, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told him the next day to let France live its life as a nation.

Trump posted that "this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country" on Oct. 6 this year, a day of school protests across France. Vice President JD Vance then claimed that Western liberals had "imported the third world into France," and the "Muslim city" remark followed two days later.

Macron answered in Doha on Oct. 21. He called comments from many people, including foreign leaders, "as unacceptable as they are stupid" and named no leader. Asked whether that included the U.S. president, he reportedly said, "Among others."

Until now, no French official has been reported answering the "Muslim city" sentence by name. The difference is France used to answer Trump within a day. But at least they don't let claims go unanswered. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the identity explanation coming from the White House gives veiled support, even authority, to a rival party.

The French party that stands to benefit from Trump’s statements has not been reported repeating his words, perhaps because they had already been making the same argument long before he did.

French far-right's double game

In 2005, after two teenagers died hiding from the police outside Paris and riots spread to hundreds of towns, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Marine Le Pen's father and then the far right's leader, blamed immigration from the Third World, while ministers cited polygamy.

The police who studied the riots found them unorganized and gave Muslims "no role" in them. Five years later Marine Le Pen likened Muslim street prayers, held where mosques lacked room, to an occupation of French territory. A court later acquitted her of inciting religious hatred, as the prosecutor had asked.

In a 2017 survey, more than three in four Le Pen voters agreed that immigration is a deliberate project to replace one civilization with another. In the next presidential race, her far-right rival Eric Zemmour campaigned openly on stopping this "great replacement."

Le Pen avoids the term and says she targets extremism. This August she pledged a referendum on a law against Islamic ideologies that would penalize the "Islamic veil" in public.

On the surface, Le Pen insists that France’s Muslims are part of France. Asked days before Trump spoke about Muslims who might leave if she wins, she used the language of citizenship, declaring that Islam "is compatible with the Republic" and that "they are French."

But while Le Pen speaks of belonging, Edwige Diaz, who chairs the RN group in the French Senate and represents the Gironde, the department around Bordeaux, sends another message. She blamed the Oct. 17 violence in Bordeaux on the radicalized far left, who encourage foreigners and immigrants, adding that, "Our line is clear: foreigners who commit offenses on our soil must be expelled."

In June, RN President Jordan Bardella had refused Trump's support for the campaign. But Trump's forecast of a Muslim Paris has drawn no reported RN reply, so voters who share it have no reason to leave RN.

What France's Muslims pay

France's Muslims, whom these statements concern most, had already made their fears known. In a poll by Ifop, a French polling firm, taken before Trump spoke, 46% of Muslim respondents said they would consider leaving France if Le Pen won next spring, compared with 21% overall. About eight in 10 of them expected more attacks and discrimination, and over a quarter of them would consider hiding their faith.

Le Pen told France's Muslims they were wrong to fear her. Days later Trump forecast a Muslim Paris, and no RN leader was reported pushing back. The RN gets to reassure Muslims and keep voters who agree with Trump happy at once, with the presidential election six months away.