Said Donald Trump, quoted in a New York Magazine article, where they seem able to mind-read, "Trump Mocks France Because He’s Jealous of World War II Celebrations" (New York Magazine).
May 15, 2025
"Now, we love France, right? But I think we did a little more to win the war than France. Do we agree?"
"You know, I don’t want to be a wise guy, but when Hitler made his speech at the Eiffel Tower, I would say that wasn’t exactly exactly ideal. And I called up the president, Macron, good guy by the way, 'Donald, we are celebrating our victory over the Germans.' 'Oh, that’s wonderful.' No, we don’t take credit for what we do. And I said, what the hell every country I’ve spoken to in the last week is celebrating the war but us. Isn’t that terrible? So we’re gonna be doing holidays. But I said it has to be working holiday because you know you can only do so many of them. We have a lot of holidays. I’m not so sure we should have them, and you don’t have to go to work. Our country has to go to work. So we’re gonna have a working holiday for each one of those two dates and we’re gonna be celebrating too because we should celebrate more than anybody else...."
Said Donald Trump, quoted in a New York Magazine article, where they seem able to mind-read, "Trump Mocks France Because He’s Jealous of World War II Celebrations" (New York Magazine).
Said Donald Trump, quoted in a New York Magazine article, where they seem able to mind-read, "Trump Mocks France Because He’s Jealous of World War II Celebrations" (New York Magazine).
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52 comments:
"New York Magazine creates headline that says, without evidence......."
Our allies for over a century all dislike us, but at least the rulers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar appreciate how easy it is to get what they want from our government, and appear to enjoy our president’s willingness to trade US government policy for personal enrichment. So we have some friends.
Is he actually jealous? Or does he think that French celebrations are out of proportion to the French role in winning WW2?
Jealousy is a vice, so naturally the NYT attributes it to its political enemy.
Extra! Extra! New York Mag publishes a mockumentary.
Sound out some Brits, Czechs, Poles, or Russians about France's contribution to winning the war in Europe.
"Jealousy is a vice, so naturally the NYT attributes it to its political enemy"
Exactly. The headlong dive into TDS is the irresistible prog instinct,
Regardless, mocking the French never hurt any American politician,
I don’t think he is jealous or that others are out of proportion. I think he just realizes the US has every reason to be proud of winning that war as other countries. Why not celebrate? Even if that celebration is in spirit rather than just another day off.
Somebody has been looking at long-term energy policy, and reviewing all those success stories about NetZero (no emissions because no power), and has taken a leadership position in diplomacy with countries with lots of proven reserves. Next, watch for the announcements for new modular designs for small nuclear power plants. A.I. and crypto currencies require lots and lots of electricity. The ones with high baseline energy availability will be the ones driving the world economy.
The French need the myth of resistance and victory to unify them. Otherwise they would have been caught in an infinite loop of recriminations between surrenderers, resisters, and gleeful boxcar-stuffing collaborators. The Commies would have exploited the chaos to take charge.
However slight the difference between full blown Marxism and the France that actually resulted, it's worth some unearned parades.
JSM
Said Donald Trump, quoted in a New York Magazine article, where they seem able to mind-read
If we had celebrations, or if we had no celebrations, either way you could count on this magazine and pretty much all the rest of the journalistic establishment to publish articles attacking Trump on no firmer basis than these telepathic confabulations.
It's interesting that his tie is, uncharacteristically, the exact same color as the carpet Qatar rolled out for him. What can't this man do?
Our allies for over a century all dislike us
Fuck our "allies for over a century". Fuck them, I say. They were involved with the Democrat Party's get-Trump conspiracy right up to their eyeballs.
Let's withdraw every one of our soldiers from overseas, and force them to dismantle their cushy socialist welfare states to defend themselves from Putin and Xi and the Muslim and African hordes.
In fact, let's go further, and do all we can to foment far-right nationalist revolutions all across Europe, leaving the Left in rubble and ruins.
It's beautiful that we can add Edith Piaf to the resistance column, if recent scholarship bears out. Audrey Hepburn and Edith Piaf. That's winning.
In fairness, must add Anais Nin.
The French need the myth of resistance and victory to unify them. Otherwise they would have been caught in an infinite loop of recriminations between surrenderers, resisters, and gleeful boxcar-stuffing collaborators.
For sale:
French Rifles. Each dropped once. Never fired.
Huff Post reports that white House makes only 20% of his transcripts available. Guessing because of the ratio of bilge like this.
France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and surrendered on 294 days later. There's nothing to be proud of or celebrate in those few days, and its mainly because French socialists had spent the 7,601 days leading up to 11 September 1939 excoriating everyone but themselves for the carnage of the Great War, as if there was nothing worth killing and dying for except international socialism. Consequently, the socialist resisted every effort to prepare France for war since Hitler's annexation of Czechoslovakia. French Communists were even worse. They were obediently outraged when the panzers rolled into Prague, and obediently gleeful when they rolled into Poland. The masterful Stalin says Hitler is now our chum, so fuck the Poles! Communist conscripts did everything they could to ruin France's hectic efforts to re-arm and fortify short of outright mutiny. They broke their rifles. They lost their ammunition. The dragged their feet like a legion of Steppin Fetchits.
The stupidity and arrogance of the socialists was only to be expected, as was the duplicity of the Communists, but the conservatives we hardly better. They dawdled and debated until the Nazis were close enough to smell. That's when they panicked and tried to make up for lost time. France ordered thousands of tons of American weaponry -- Curtiss P-36 and P-40 fighters, Bell P-400s, Brewster Buffaloes, artillery shells, search lights, anything available -- and paid for it with tons of gold. But the orders came far too late. None of the deliveries arrived before Maxime Weygand met Adolf Hitler at Compiègne.
After Pearl Harbor, we re-armed the French again, some of them at least, and this time it was under Lend-Lease terms, IOW, at American taxpayers' immediate expense to be reimbursed at a later date yet to be determined.
I see the Intelligencer link has the obligatory clip from the Simpson's on cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
In Rhode Island we celebrate VJ (Victory over Japan) day in August. I think we are the only state that celebrates it any more. Some people get a bit frothy about it each year, but I think most people don't want to risk losing a long weekend in the summer.
The French army was crushed in 6 weeks. Afterwards de Gaulle and the Free French Army couldn't decide whether or not to fight for the Germans or against them. So (my opinion) the French were pretty worthless (even the Canadians contributed more to the fight!), have nothing to be proud of and actively hindered the Allies throughout the war.
But can you really blame them? Churchill's attack at Mers-el-Kébir killed 1,297 French servicemen, sank a French battleship and damaged five other ships. This seriously p*ssed off the French for like ages.
When, precisely, did the Columbia School of Journalism merge with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College?
Serious question.
968 Rallies over 3 campaigns. Amazing communicator indeed.
Makes me reflect on the people who still hate President Trump…are they mentally ill or what?
I saw on X that Theo Von was there, too, being his usual self-deprecating goofy guy.
https://x.com/charliespiering/status/1923023938361217155
Forget a single holiday, swap Pride Month for Veterans month.
Give LBGTQ..a recognition day and give veterans the month.
Any commenter here doesn't personally know, or know of, a Purple Heart recipient, or someone killed in action? Or, a vet who wasn't wounded but whose life was in danger during war?
THis is so stupid, and I'm suprised Trump is saying this. We celebrate - or should be celebrating - VJ day not VE day. WW II ended for the USA in August 1945. We continued to fight after VE day for another 3 months. Thousands of US servicemen were killed.
People in europe celebrate VE day because that's when WW II ended - in their opinion. The soviets attacked Japan a few weeks before ended. And the Brits were doing a little fighting Burma. But in both countries, the war was over in May 1945. That's why the brits held an election and kicked out Churchill.
And the French army lost as many men in ground combat as the USA army did in Europe during WW II. They not only lost 80000 KIA in May/June 1940. They lost tens of thousands as POW, and even more fighting in North Africa, Italy and France. IRC, the french had 10 divisions fighting in the ETO in April 45.
They just weren't sitting around eating cheese. And we had in 1940, 3-4 times then number of young men under 30. The French are the French, its easy to dislike them and their absurd pretensions to being a great power, but they did a lot of fightng and dying in WW 2.
Hitler gave a speech at the Eiffel Tower? I have to check my history books - I don't recall that.
The French get a bad rap for WWII. Their soldiers fought well and many sacrificed themselves to protect the British at Dunkirk. French generals and political leaders, on the other hand...
In his 1940 presidential campaign fdr promised to keep us out of the European war (see also Wilson in 16 & lbj in 64). The overwhelming majority of Americans, 60-80% realized we had no dog in that fight.
But he kept poking and prodding Germany until in December 41 they declared war on us. Financing britae, giving them arms and warships, invading Iceland, attacking German ships and more.
That gave fdr the excuse he needed for the US to get openly involved.
We had no business getting involved.
It was a European problem and we should have left them to solve it.
Fuck Europe.
John Henry
Who stopped, or at least slowed down, Das Reich in June 1944? Answer: the people of the Perigord.
R ocean,
I agree we should celebrate vj day in addition to ve day. Us involvement in ind pacific was far more legitimate than our involvement in Europe.
But we treated the pacific almost as a sideshow with our official "ejfoluFirst" policy.
2-1/2 times as many US military died in Europe as the pacific. 50m in the 8th af bombing Germany. Vs 25m marines in the pacific.
But yes, celebrate vj day. It was the legitimate war. For the us.
U
"But the extermination camps" someone is sure to say.
Yeah, the Germans murdered 12mm in their camps.
The Japanese murdered 10-20mm in camps, reprisals and other atrocities.
John he
Readering said...
Huff Post reports that white House makes only 20% of his transcripts available. Guessing because of the ratio of bilge like this.
The interesting thing about this post is that someone is stupid enough to trust what the Huffpost says about Trump.
LLR-democratical Rich seems to have a special fondness for the Vichy French.
Which makes alot of sense really given the New Soviet Democraticals clear political alignment with Iran, hamas, murderous drug cartels and the ChiComs. Its a consistent America Last world view.
Spiros: "The French army was crushed in 6 weeks. Afterwards de Gaulle and the Free French Army couldn't decide whether or not to fight for the Germans or against them. So (my opinion) the French were pretty worthless (even the Canadians contributed more to the fight!), have nothing to be proud of and actively hindered the Allies throughout the war."
To analogize this to modern political circumstances in the US, the crushed French Army is the deep state + dems + GOPe (still dangerous, dumb, unable to adapt with America Last instincts) and Trump is Patton, who famously said he'd rather have 2 German Divisions in front of him instead of a French Division behind him.
DeGaulle can be criticized for a lot, but he knew whose side he was on and only imbeciles think he had doubts about it.
Trump is the son of a billionaire, raised with a silver spoon in his mouth. He got 5 questionable deferments (because he had a rich family) to avoid having to fight in Viet Nam and getting his sorry ass blown up. Trump is a fucking draft dodger coward who never served. People died in Viet Nam because Trump dodged the draft in his place. Trump should shut his fucking mouth about those soldiers who fought and died in WWII.
The wars in Europe and the Pacific/CBI were different but neither was a sideshow, or even 'almost a sideshow.'
Different enemies, different climates, different geographies dictated that one would be mostly a traditional conflict of mass armies supported by fleets and air forces, and the other would use small land forces to enable fleets and air forces to strangle an island empire.
And in the Pacific, practically all the infrastructure had to be brought in and built on the spot. Each soldier or marine in that theater required far more logistical support than one in Europe.
Anyway, it's asinine to carp about how or why people choose to acknowledge a costly victory that took the combined might of the UK, USSR, and USA plus many smaller countries to achieve.
Sideshow might not be a great choice of words. It certainly wasn't a sideshow to the people who fought and died there. But politically. It might be accurate
Strategically, if one accepts we should have been in europe, that was probably the right policy
I notice that for some reason, whenever Trump is abroad and talks about past military operations, or meets with ofreign leaders, there is a considered effort to misquote what he says, to assign the worst possible interpretation to it, to impute horrified reactions from foreign leadership that aren't there, and to put a lot of media horsepower into the effort, to make it last as long as possible - even after the misquotes, mis-directions, and outright lies have been pointed out. I wonder why that is? What is it about past wars and campaigns that drives this kind of commitment to over-reacting and histrionics? The reactions even happen here, predictably from the usual cranks.
V-J Day was the end of the war for us, but there's a problem. When we think of V-E Day, we might think of Hitler killing himself in his bunker or the royal family appearing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. When we think of V-J Day, there's that a-bomb thing, and a lot of people are uncomfortable with that.
Rhode Island did have a legal holiday on V-J Day, but now they call it "Bay Day," and they've moved it up a week to the end of July. It's a pity, severing the connection we had with the generation that won the war.
"Makes me reflect on the people who still hate President Trump…are they mentally ill or what?"
And I can't help but assume the same for those who still love President Trump...they are mentally ill, entranced by a perfidious cult leader.
Achilles, the interesting thing is that when the reporter asked a flak about it he deflected instead of denying.
Kinda amazing that there was quick consensus to focus on Europe over the Pacific in '41, although I believe the military then devoted more resources to the Pacific than had been agreed.
In 1942 and early '43 the Pacific demanded more in the way of unplanned US commitment because the position was more dire in comparison to that in Europe--where there were powerful allies already fully engaged.
In the Pacific it was pretty much the US and some ragtag Commonwealth and Dutch assets.
Europe was prioritized in the first place because Germany was recognized as the most powerful of the Axis powers (although Japan's population was actually larger, their scientific, industrial, and economic sectors were a fraction of the Reich's).
Defeating Japan quickly would have had marginal effects on the war in Europe; defeating Germany made Japanese defeat inevitable.
Cookie: "And I can't help but assume the same for those who still love President Trump...they are mentally ill, entranced by a perfidious cult leader."
Unreconstructed Stalinists are the best assessors of cultish behavior towards leaders....
We’ve always mocked France over WW2. Its part of our heritage
Robert Cook said...
"Makes me reflect on the people who still hate President Trump…are they mentally ill or what?"
And I can't help but assume the same for those who still love President Trump...they are mentally ill, entranced by a perfidious cult leader.
Cook is really angry. But not at Trump's policies as such. Trump is doing what every democrat/progressive promised to do for the last 50 years.
Trump is ending all of the wars, making peace, and cleaning out government corruption while raising working class wages.
Cook is actually mad about Trump because Trump is making Cook look like the phony he is. Cook doesn't believe in any of things he says. Cook is only interested in power over other people so he can take their stuff and "distribute" it "fairly" i.e. to himself.
Nobody can actually point to a policy Trump is implementing they disagree with and they always resort to violence and the threat of it. Cook and Comey have this in common.
Rico said...
Hitler gave a speech at the Eiffel Tower? I have to check my history books - I don't recall that.
The French get a bad rap for WWII.
Yeah, that's probably a seriously but not literally statement. Hitler certainly went out of his way to humiliate the French though, for example, using the same railway car for the surrender where the WWI Armistice was dictated.
The second part I agree with, as a number of other folks have commented. "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys" is probably a good depiction of the French politicians and General Staff but not the combat troops. Tens of thousands of French and Belgians sacrificed themselves to keep the coastal pockets at Dunkirk and other locations open for Operation Dynamo. Hundreds of thousands (along with thousands of stranded Brits) were captured and then held in deplorable conditions because it was "only an armistice" according to the Germans. The rifle jokes are pretty unfair. Patton's quip is probably more about coordination (or lack thereof) with French command staff than the bravery of French troops.
"And in the Pacific, practically all the infrastructure had to be brought in and built on the spot."
England was a spot to assemble and store our stuff. We got practically nil from the English to the point we were feeding the English population.
The English military were stunned when we unloaded our tanks and trucks and simply drove them off the docks. Nothing that was supplied to our troops came from England except the land to pitch our tents.
A P47 arrived in England in two wooden crates. Everything needed to assemble that airplane came in those two crates. Fifty men and the wood from the crates and you could have a flying P47 in less than a working day.
Shouldn't that be "envious?" (Instead of "jealous?")
For the US, the war did not end in August. And all those guys who came home from Europe were just on leave, not separated, because they were all going to be shipped to the invasion of Japan. I am guessing DJT won't be apologizing for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, if anything he would note that the swift end of the war saved a projected million casualties in Operation Overlord.
Rusty, I think you may be mistaken on some points, but don't want to comment without checking some things.
One thing I'm sure about is that the USAAC/USAAF flew British-built planes at times--fighters like Spitfires and f/b like the Beaufighter. It wasn't the equal of what we gave them, but it wasn't nothing either.
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