White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt chastised a low-ranking French politician who made headlines for demanding that the United States return the Statue of Liberty, noting that it symbolizes America’s historical contributions to global peace.
“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” Raphaël Glucksmann, a socialist and member of France’s left-wing Place Publique party in France, said. “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.’”
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“We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it,” Glucksmann added. “So it will be just fine here at home.”
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated to the U.S. by France on Oct. 28, 1886. Sculpted from copper and steel by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, it is more than 305 feet tall and weighs 225 tons.
.@pdoocy: "Is President Trump going to send the Statue of Liberty back to France?"
— CSPAN (@cspan) March 17, 2025
.@PressSec: "Absolutely not…it's only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now. So, they should be very grateful, to our great country." pic.twitter.com/rQHFyTP7iK
Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy asked Leavitt during the White House press briefing on Monday if President Donald Trump would ever give back the Statue of Liberty to France.
FRENCH POLITICIAN DEMANDS US RETURN THE STATUE OF LIBERTY
“Absolutely not,” Leavitt responded. “And, 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.”
“So they should be very grateful to our great country,” she continued, referencing the U.S. troops who liberated France from Nazi Germany in World War II.