French Lawmaker: Give Us Back Lady Liberty

'Apparently you despise it,' says MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, accusing US of siding with tyrants
Posted Mar 17, 2025 11:18 AM CDT
French Lawmaker: We Want Lady Liberty Back
Raphael Glucksmann at the European Parliament on Tuesday, March 11, 2025 in Strasbourg, eastern France.   (AP Photo/Pascal Bastien)

A Canadian premier suggested turning off electricity to 1.5 million US homes and businesses, and now a French lawmaker is suggesting the return of the Statue of Liberty. Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament who is co-president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, put forth the suggestion at a party convention Sunday, saying President Trump's apparent embrace of dictators indicated the US had abandoned the values for which Lady Liberty stands. "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,'" said Glucksmann, per Politico. "We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home."

The statue's engraved lines, welcoming the "tired" and "poor" masses "yearning to breathe free," "don't ring as strongly these days" given the Trump administration's mass deportations, as Euronews puts it. Still, Glucksmann's comment was tongue-in-cheek, per Politico. The S&D lawmaker appeared more serious, however, when suggesting Americans who've lost their jobs under the Trump administration's government cuts could move to France, where their skills would be better appreciated. "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. (More Statue of Liberty stories.)

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