President Emmanuel Macron chastised US Ambassador Charles Kushner for publicly suggesting France hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism, saying it reflects poorly on American diplomacy.
“I think this is a mistake and an unacceptable statement for somebody who is supposed to be a diplomat,” Macron said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation aired Sunday. “If you are a diplomat, you have to follow the rule of diplomacy.”
The French Foreign Ministry issued a rebuke in August after President Donald Trump’s envoy to Paris wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed he addressed to Macron. Kushner said he was writing “out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it.”
On CBS, Macron defended his record on confronting antisemitism in France and said US “taxpayer money is not properly used to finance this kind of statement” by Kushner as a representative of the US government.
Kushner, who is Jewish, is a real estate developer and the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared. He served more than a year in federal prison for crimes including tax evasion and witness tampering, but Trump later pardoned him in 2020.
Antisemitic incidents have risen in France, spurred by the Israeli military operation in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands since the Oct. 7, 2023, assault and hostage-taking by Hamas militants in Israel. Targets in France have included the national Holocaust memorial, synagogues and a Jewish-owned restaurant, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
About the Author
