White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back on a French lawmaker Monday who suggested that France should take back the Statue of Liberty from the U.S. over the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
“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,” Ms. Leavitt said at Monday’s press briefing. “So they should be very grateful to our great country.”
Reporters reacted with audible gasps to the World War II reference.
Left-wing French politician Raphaël Glucksmann told Le Monde that he thinks his country should take back the renowned statue, a gift from France, that stands on Liberty Island in New York City.
“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,’” Mr. Glucksmann told the French outlet.
“We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home,” he was quoted as saying at a convention of his left-of-center political party, Place Publique.
Although Mr. Gluckman may want France to take back the statue, according to UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural arm that has the statue on its list of World Heritage treasures, the iconic monument is U.S. government property.
It was originally seen as a monumental gesture of French-American friendship to mark the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
But a war that erupted in 1870 between France and German states led by Prussia diverted the energies of the monument’s designer, French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.
The gift also took time to be funded, with a decision taken that the French would pay for the statue and Americans would cover the costs of its pedestal.
Transported in 350 pieces from France, the statue was officially unveiled Oct. 28, 1886.
— This article is based in part on wire service reports.
