French President Emmanuel Macron has publicly criticized Donald Trump for leveraging the recent unrest in France to generate momentum for the U.S. midterm elections.

French President Emmanuel Macron publicly criticized foreign leaders including Donald Trump during a Wednesday visit to Qatar for exploiting recent violent riots in France to attack immigrants and advance their own political agendas. Macron stated there was no evidence of foreign forces intervening in or inciting the French unrest, but foreign-manipulated information had since emerged, leading multiple world leaders to make what he called "unacceptable and stupid" remarks. He explicitly noted, "Trump is among them." "We have seen some AI-generated images depicting scenes that never occurred in France. Some also claim France is being invaded by groups of immigrants and Islamists, which is completely false." Macron also lashed out at those "in certain parts of France, or across the Atlantic, using our situation to campaign for their own elections," saying, "These people make me very angry." Trump’s Republican Party is two weeks away from the U.S. midterm elections. Since French protests escalated into riots last Saturday, Trump has repeatedly cited France’s violence and scenes of looting and vandalism to link the events to immigration policy. Trump also warned U.S. voters, "Look at France and you will know," and claimed "Paris will soon become a Muslim city." These remarks connect the unrest in France to the U.S. immigration policy debate, but French police have not yet definitively linked the riots to immigrants or Islamist radicals.