The White House has said France should be “grateful” to the US because “the French would be speaking German” if it wasn’t for them.
The comments were made by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday, after she was asked about the suggestion from a French MEP that the Statue of Liberty should be returned to France.
MEP Raphaël Glucksmann said Americans should give the statue back after ‘choosing to side with the tyrants.’
The statue was famously gifted to America by France in 1884 as a gesture of goodwill to commemorate the alliance between the two nations.
But Glucksmann claimed this week the US “no longer embodies the values the sculpture represents,” France 24 reports.
Asked on Monday whether the US would consider returning the statue across the Atlantic, Leavitt said: “Absolutely not.”
She continued: “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.
“So, they should be very grateful, to our great country.”
Many were quick to point out though that it is only because of the French that the United States exists, after France supported the US in its war of independence.
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