‘france Should Serve As A Wakeup Call’: Republicans Find A Closing Message In Paris Riots

Republicans wanted a jolt for their campaigns. They found it in France.

In the campaign’s final stretch, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican candidates and their boosters are using the violence in Paris to warn what America will look like under Democratic control.

Trump on Tuesday said he would spend over “400 million dollars” from his war chest to help Republicans “especially after witnessing what is taking place in France, and other locations throughout Europe.”

“What's happening to France, they want to happen to our country,” Trump said in Kansas on Monday night. “Democrats are the party of anti-western marxists and hostile third world migrants.”

The effort to push Paris in front of Americans comes as Republicans struggle to close an enthusiasm gap that persists even in red states and threatens to sweep the GOP from control of Congress. Polls show tight Senate races in multiple states that Trump won two years ago, including Kansas and North Carolina where Vance campaigned on Monday. And some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House.

The challenge for Trump and his party is turning out Republicans in the red states where they have a registration advantage. For months, Republicans have criticized Democrats such as Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Texas Senate candidate James Talarico for their allegedly “radical,” anti-American views. And Republicans also attacked the Democratic Socialists of America as scheming to turn the United States into a “communist nation.”

What sets the riots in France apart is that it offers multiple days of fresh visuals that Republicans are suggesting is a storm ready to blow across the Atlantic if Democrats get their way.

“While Republicans have their challenges, the capture of the Democrat Party by the DSA leaves them exposed to this sort of attack,” Jason Thielman, former executive director of the NRSC and partner at Public and political Affairs consulting firm S2R. “Especially when you look at who the undecided voters are in these red wall states — they're folks who lean toward us and want to fall for us, but they need just a little bit of a nudge.”

The unrest in France started weeks ago with student protests against poor conditions and overcrowding in schools. Protesters then called for national demonstrations against high energy costs and rising inflation, fueling new clashes with police, looting and burning buildings.

Connecting that perceived anarchy to Democratic policies will be a focus of the GOP’s closing message, according to six Republicans who spoke to POLITICO.

Trump jumped on the protests early as a political talking point and, so far, there’s been remarkable message discipline. Trump and other leading GOP figures are also attempting to tie the violence in France to the anti-immigrant sentiments that helped propel them to victory in 2024, blaming the protests on outside agitators too easily allowed into the country by an open border policy that the left embraces.

Vance, at a rally in North Carolina on Monday, said the protests are “what happens when you bring in people who don't share the culture of the country.”

Speaker Mike Johnson blamed the “chaos” on France’s open borders, picking up on a Trump attack line. “What we are witnessing is a chilling warning for all Americans of what happens if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets their way,” he wrote on X.

The Republican National Committee had a strikingly similar message pointing to France as an example of what goes wrong when immigration is left unchecked. Trump’s promise to seal the border and deport undocumented immigrants was a pillar of his 2024 campaign and helped propel him to the White House.

“What's happening in France serves as a reminder that when unvetted migrants who refuse to assimilate are imported into a country they hate, that country will fall into violent chaos,” said RNC National Press Secretary Natalie Baldassarre. “Democrats are pushing the same failed policies that led France to this point, and Republicans are fighting every day to secure our borders, enforce the law and protect the American way of life.”

Some Democrats are skeptical that this will amount to anything more than the latest spaghetti Republicans are throwing against the wall as polls show them trailing in many races they once thought they’d win. Trump, for his part, has already offered $5,000 to every American if they win, warned Democrats want transgender surgery for minors, blamed high gas prices on Ukraine and called affordability a Democratic hoax because of the persistent inflation under former President Joe Biden.

The images of France burning are unlikely to resonate with American voters, who are mostly concerned with the cost of living and corruption in government, said John Della Volpe, a Harvard University pollster who was an adviser on Biden’s 2020 campaign.

“This is not about persuasion,” he said. “It's about mobilization of the MAGA base.”

That might be the point – especially in states that have recently voted Republicans to statewide office.

In North Carolina, where Trump campaigned on Tuesday, Jason Simmons, chairman of the state’s Republican party and the 2020 regional political director for Trump Victory, argued Democrats tried to create an environment like France under Biden.

“France should serve as a wakeup call for all Americans,” Simmons said. “What can happen here in America, especially when you have some dark, left-wing groups who are willing to stoke those flames and allow these individuals to be funded.”

The White House has amplified the warnings, posting  violent images on social media, captioned with, “This is the future Democrats want for America - this is what we're fighting to prevent.” The White House X account shared a New York Post cover story on France and added: “If you want to see what's at stake, look at France. The future doesn't have to look like this.”

“President Trump is right: the riots in France are a direct result of their leader’s open border policies. This is what will happen in America if radical Democrats have their way,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “They are the party of open borders, amnesty, lawlessness, and chaos while President Trump and Republicans are the party of commonsense and law and order.”

Peter Navarro, a White House trade advisor, said in an interview with POLITICO that the violence in France is the result of the sort of lax immigration policies pushed by Democratic Socialists.

“It's the warning shot,” he said. “In a democracy when you get a flood of immigrants and they gain the power of the ballot box in superior numbers, then they take over.”

On Monday, Florida GOP Rep. Randy Fine — who's in a safe red district — was rallying with GOP gubernatorial candidate Rep. Byron Donalds and told the crowd that they’d been watching Fox News coverage of the protests together on the bus.

“They are not mostly peaceful, they sure as hell aren't students, and they're not protestors. And make no mistake: That will come to America, and that will come to Florida if we don't stand up and do something about it,” Fine said.

One GOP donor, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Trump and Republicans are playing the international news exactly right.

“The Black Lives Matter protests of a few years ago, you get the things that go on on college campuses– threading those all together would be a powerful signal to people that we need to stop this anti-America, anti-Western sentiment that's emerging,” the person said.

Meredith Lee Hill and Kimberly Leonard contributed to this report.