Close White House tells French politician he’d be speaking German if it wasn’t for the US Get our free Inside Washington email Email I would like to receive emails from The Independent on special deals, events, and updates. Read our Privacy Policy. A French politician has asked the United States to return the Statue of Liberty in the wake of President Donald Trump’s policies, which appear to align with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, made the remarks during a convention of the Place Publique center-left movement on Sunday.

“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” Glucksmann shouted, according to Agence France-Presse. “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.'” A French official is pushing for the return of the Statue of Liberty, which has been open for 140 years.

On July 4, 1884, France presented the statue to the United States to honor the 108th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The statue measures 305 feet tall and weighs 450,000 pounds. The sculpture, sculpted by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, is currently on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. There is a replica of the statue on the Seine River in Paris.

Without financial support from European nations, the United States would most likely not have won the Revolutionary War. The United States did not reciprocate when the French Revolution began in 1789.

Glucksmann, a member of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, is a strong supporter of Ukraine. Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has chastised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and claimed Ukraine initiated the war, despite the fact that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Zelensky was eventually ordered to leave the White House last month after the meeting.

“We gave it to you as a gift,” Glucksmann said, emphasizing the foundational values of the United States: freedom and liberty. “But you seem to despise it.” So everything will be alright here at home. During a White House briefing Monday, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the US will “absolutely not” return the statue to France.

My advise to that unidentified, low-level French politician would be to remind them that the French are currently not speaking German because to the United States of America. So they should be very thankful,” Leavitt said, referring to the United States’ military help after Nazi Germany conquered France during WWII.

Glucksmann continued his remarks by suggesting that France would welcome top researchers who had been sacked as a result of budget cuts at the National Institutes of Health and similar organizations. “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.'”