France accuses Trump of lacking 'decency' over angry tweets on Paris attacks anniversary

A French government spokesman has criticised Donald Trump for displaying a lack of “common decency” when he attacked Emmanuel Macron on the anniversary of the 2015 Paris terror attacks. As France marked the anniversary of the Bataclan attacks in which 130 people were killed, Trump launched a string of angry tweets on Tuesday, condemning the key US ally over its near defeat to Germany in two world wars, its wine industry and Emmanuel Macron’s approval ratings. When asked on Wednesday about the US leader’s Twitter posts, the French government spokesman, Benjamin Griveaux, said: “Yesterday was November 13. We were marking the murder of 130 of our people, so I’ll reply in English: ‘common decency’ would have been appropriate.” It was the most strongly worded official response to come out of Paris since Trump launched his social media assault after returning to Washington from a weekend in Paris to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war where strained relations between the US president and European allies were on full display. The basis of Trump’s attack appeared to be a misunderstanding of an interview Macron gave to the Europe 1 radio station last week, calling for an EU army so that the continent could defend itself alone “without only relying on the United States”. Although Macron told Trump his words had been misinterpreted, Trump ignored this and wrote five tweets covering the French president’s low popularity, unemployment in France, tariffs on American wine and France’s second world war record. The French were “starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along”, he wrote. His final tweet concluded: “MAKE FRANCE GREAT AGAIN!”