The White House on Monday pushed back on a French politician who called for the United States to return the Statue of Liberty to France, jabbing the “low-level” French lawmaker.
“Absolutely not,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during the daily briefing about the chances of sending the statue back.
“And my advice to that unnamed, low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,” Leavitt continued. “So, they should be very grateful to our country.”
Raphael Glucksmann, a center-left politician and member of France’s parliament, had called for the U.S. to return the statue to France on Sunday, saying the U.S. no longer represents the values it championed that prompted France to give the statue.
“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” Glucksmann said at a convention. “We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty.’”
“We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home,” he said.
The Statue of Liberty was gifted to the United States by France to commemorate the relationship between the two countries and America’s fight for freedom and democracy. It was unveiled in New York City in 1886 and has since become one of the country’s leading symbols.
Famously, Lady Liberty has a plaque of Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus.”
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath three, the wretched refuse of your teeming short. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door,” the poem reads.
Glucksmann, a vocal supporter of Ukraine in its war against Russia, appeared to be speaking out over the Trump administration’s recent moves involving Ukraine as well as its push to slash federal programs in the U.S. and mass deportation agenda, Politico reported.
“The second thing we’re going to say to the Americans is: ‘If you want to fire your best researchers, if you want to fire all the people who, through their freedom and their sense of innovation, their taste for doubt and research, have made your country the world’s leading power, then we’re going to welcome them,” he said.
