PARIS — Former French President François Hollande said the United States government under President Donald Trump is “no longer an ally.”
“[Trump] is no longer an ally, he is consorting with our adversaries,” Hollande, current President Emmanuel Macron’s predecessor, said in a blunt interview with Le Monde published Friday. “Even if the American people remain our friends, the Trump administration itself is no longer our ally.”
Hollande, who now sits in the French parliament as a member of the center-left Socialist Party, said Trump’s decision to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” (which he walked back on Thursday); his plans to hold direct talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin; and the U.S. vote against a draft U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine all signal a potential “divorce” on the horizon between Europe and the United States.
Though Hollande did not fault Macron, his former economy minister, for engaging with Trump during a trip to Washington earlier this week, he argued that the visit would’ve been more effective with other leaders alongside him and insisted that “seduction and argumentation” wouldn’t work on the U.S. president.
When asked if Macron’s visit had yielded “satisfying results,” as Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot claimed, Hollande responded: “No, because I’m lucid.”
Hollande was president during the 2014 during the Russian annexation of Crimea, and, alongside former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, brokered the Minsk agreements between Russia and Ukraine. Those accords set up a cease-fire that failed to prevent Putin from launching his full-scale invasion three years ago.
Hollande, 70, is often mentioned among potential candidates in the next French presidential election, which is scheduled for 2027.
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