It’s springtime in Paris, the official start of the 249th squabbling season between French and American politicians.
A ramble down memory lane in U.S.-French relations usually inspires recollections of heartwarming classics like U.S. Army Col. Charles Stanton in 1914 marching doughboys to Picpus Cemetery and, with an emphatic “Lafayette, we are here,” saluting the tomb of the marquis who fought alongside George Washington and persuaded France to bankroll the American Revolution.
The Trump Administration now plans to invigorate the merriment by slapping a 200% tariff on some 30 million bottles of champagne France annually ships to the United States.
But lest we forget the 100% tariffed bubbly that flowed on that rainy June day in 1961, when President John F. Kennedy, on his maiden trip to Paris with his dazzling French-speaking first lady, dropped three sentences after which France fell forever in love with American cool:
“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris,” JFK confessed to unrelenting cheers and applause.
“And I have enjoyed it. Any American who shares the experiences which we have had during the past two days would come away from this country with a feeling of confidence and hope.”
Absolutely.
The $13 billion Marshall Plan that restored Europe after World War II focused $5.5 billion to transform France from a nation of luxury agricultural products into a fully modernized economy of enlightened cynics, also known as existentialists.
“France is violently opposed to blatant American imperialism now rampant in the world,” President Charles de Gaulle said shortly after JFK’s visit. “France will continue to attack and oppose the United States in Latin America, in Asia, and Africa.”
Rarely does reality pay full attention to the great Franco-American foreign policy stupidities, like the time de Gaulle in 1966 pulled France out of NATO and commanded all American troops toots sweet depart “la Patrie Française.”
“Do you want us to move American cemeteries out of France as well?” asked U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk, referring to the 60,000 American soldiers buried here during World War I and World War II. According to Rusk’s account, de Gaulle was so embarrassed that he got up and left the room without comment.
“Really, the old boy is off his rocker,” said Charles Bohlen, the U.S. Ambassador to France.
And the old ink-newspaper rule — when the legend becomes fact, print the legend — continues to percolate beneath the surface of Franco-American relations. To be sure, the legacy of the “Tall Asparagus” — De Gaulle — nowadays makes sense three years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yet the French aren’t the only scoundrels in the room. Just ask the respected French politician Raphaël Glucksmann, who dryly suggested President Donald Trump return the Statue of Liberty.
“No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty,” Glucksmann told Trump. “The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone. And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch here in Europe.”
Glucksmann — the son of local hero philosopher and outspoken Ronald Reagan supporter André Glucksmann — insisted the symbolic return of the statue given by France in 1886 was justified in the face of “Americans who have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants.”
French TV pundits described the “Snow White House” press secretary’s snarly retort — “it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now” — as the result of a youth wasted eating Cheetos in Disney World’s American Adventure Pavilion instead of studying the Philosophes at the Panoramix Playground at Parc Asterix.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security earlier this month didn’t do anything to curtail the narrative when the agency foiled a French scientist from entering the U.S. to attend a conference in Houston because of a negative opinion he expressed about the Trump administration’s position of academic research.
“Freedom of opinion, free research, academic freedom are values that France will continue to proudly uphold,” France’s Minister for Higher Education and Research Philippe Baptiste roared in defense of the unidentified academic.
“Why couldn’t ICE grab him in Oklahoma,” a French official who monitors America sighed to this reporter over the phone. “Deporting a French citizen from Texas spells cultural crisis. The Republic of Texas and France signed a treaty in 1839, and it’s considered as sacred as the old Texas Embassy on Place Vendôme.”
Department of Homeland Security official Tricia McLaughlin nonetheless told Americans to Remember Los Alamos.
“The French scientist in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a nondisclosure agreement — something he admitted to taking without permission and attempted to conceal,” McLaughlin snorted.
Baptiste’s response: “la daube,” a slow-cooked stew made from rancid meat soaked in alcohol, according to the award-winning dual-national French-American chef Didier Quemener.
“The love affair between France and America is starting to crumble,” Quemener frets. “We’re not in divorce court yet, but that’s where Trump is taking us.”
Keep in mind, while France may be the older nation, America is the older democratic republic — at least so far.
So, as this French lesson draws to a close, it’s probably best to understand the rapport between France and America as romantic. The centuries spent together are a tapestry of infidelities, odious in-laws, and passionate reconciliations. Politics have very little to do with the relationship.
Both are ardent about being different. Neither consider themselves, as the ignorant say, “arrogant.” Americans are prideful; French are orgueilleux. And, yes, the French made that word insufferably difficult to pronounce just to annoy Trump.
“Canada was meant to be the 51st state,” Trump continues to bully-pulpit from sea to shining sea, branding the land to the north “one of the nastiest countries to deal with.”
Fais gaffe, Monsieur le Président!
The mother-tongue and principal culture for more than 10 million Canadians — 22% of the population — is French.
A. Craig Copetas is an award-winning reporter, writer and author who has more than a half century covering news and politics for publications including Rolling Stone, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Paris.
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