Trump's insults to France 'unimaginable'
President Trump’s disparaging remarks on Twitter about France on Tuesday were highly unusual, considering France has been a US ally going back to the nation’s founding, an international relations expert said.
“Prior to this president [such remarks] would have been not just unusual but unimaginable, at least in the modern history of the country,” said Fredrik Logevall, an international affairs professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning expert on US foreign relations history and 20th century international history.
“France has been enormously important as an ally — from the nation’s beginning. France played a vital supporting role during and after the American Revolution, and the bilateral relationship has been mutually beneficial at numerous other times,” Logevall said in an e-mail.
“Even Trump’s sullen, why-do-I-have-to-be-here demeanor during his visit to France would have been impossible to conceive under any predecessor I can think of,” Logevall said.
Kathryn Statler, a history professor at the University of San Diego who is writing a book on US-France relations, said, “If it hadn’t been for France, the United States would not exist.”
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/11/13/harvard-expert-trump-insults-france-unimaginable-modern-history/g0UzNmcVLuFkr2CHJE8fVJ/story.html
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