Press Sec Rejects Call From French Lawmaker to Return Statue of Liberty

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday rejected a French politician’s request to return the Statue of Liberty, prompting that European Parliament member to call out the “shameful” administration.

“Absolutely not. 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,” Leavitt said at a press briefing, alluding to the United States helping defeat Nazi Germany in occupied France during World War II. “They should be grateful to our great country.”

The day prior, Raphaël Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, said the U.S. no longer stood for what the statue represents.

“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,’” Glucksmann said at a rally.

French Politician Demands U.S. Return the Statue of LibertyAU REVOIR!

Leigh Kimmins

The statue, gifted by the French in the 1880s, was conceived some twenty years earlier to mark the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, as well as the abolition of slavery. It has also long been symbolic of America as a refuge for the world’s “huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” as the inscription on its pedestal reads.

Glucksmann added that France would eagerly take in scientists whose work has been hampered by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the government workforce and to research grants.

In response to Leavitt’s comments Monday, Glucksmann addressed Americans in a series of posts on X.

After expressing “eternal” gratitude for the role the U.S. played in WWII, Glucksmann noted:

“But the America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin. It helped the resistance and didn’t attack Zelensky.”

“It celebrated science and didn’t fire researchers for using banned words,” he went on. “It welcomed the persecuted and didn’t target them. It was far, so far from what your current President does, says, and embodies.”

Glucksmann added that his comments should be considered a “wake up call.”

“And it is precisely because I am petrified by Trump’s betrayal that I said yesterday in a rally that we could symbolically take back the Statue of Liberty if your government despised everything it symbolizes in your eyes, ours, and those of the world. It was a wake up call,” he wrote.

“No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to everyone. And if the free world no longer interests your government, then we will take up the torch, here in Europe.”