The French president and Parisian mayor aren't happy about Trump's Paris comments

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 25 February 2017

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, President Trump told the story of his "very, very substantial" friend Jim, who used to be very fond of vacationing in Paris but no longer visits because "Paris is no longer Paris."

French President Francois Hollande on Saturday took issue with the anecdote, which Trump shared in service to a point about fighting terrorism. "There is terrorism and we must fight it together," Hollande said. "I think that it is never good to show the smallest defiance toward an allied country. I wouldn't do it with the United States and I'm urging the U.S. president not to do it with France."

Parisian Mayor Anne Hidalgo previously responded Friday on Twitter, telling Trump she "celebrate[s] the dynamism and the spirit of openness of #Paris."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.