Speaking for a ruling class under siege at the White House on Tuesday, President Donald Trump described the mass protests in France as a “full-on revolution” and demanded that European governments respond with mass deportations.

At the same event, ostensibly devoted to combating “fraud,” Trump threatened Representative Ilhan Omar with imprisonment as well as deportation along with his usual racist attacks targeting Somali immigrants.

Trump’s remarks expressed the fear gripping the ruling class as workers and young people enter into struggle against fascism, inequality, militarism and police repression. His response was to recast this social opposition as an invasion by foreigners and demand the expulsion of “insurrectionists.”

“If you look at what’s been going on in France, I have been doing this stuff for a long time. I have been watching other countries for a long time, I have never seen anything like that,” Trump said. “That wasn’t a little bit of a riot, that wasn’t a little bit of protest, that was a full-on revolution. And it continues, it continues.”

This was followed by a racist diatribe. “So we want to be helpful, we want to be with them and all, but you are not going to have a Europe pretty soon if they keep going. And it’s mostly immigrant.”

Trump’s screed began when a right-wing reporter asked whether the “socialist agenda” would bring the economic difficulties confronting France to the United States. The bogus framing of the question presented the austerity policies of Emmanuel Macron’s capitalist government as socialism.

Trump boasted of American growth and declared: “France has no growth. France is growing the other way and that’s because their social programs are brutal.” He then turned immediately to immigrants.

“But I still say, and some people say it’s controversial, but I don’t care, it’s an immigration problem. You have people that poured into France, and they were also unchecked, unvetted like with Biden when he was doing, we don’t do that. We got many of them out and we are getting many more out.”

Trump claimed that his administration was targeting “the worst of the worst,” a blatant lie, and described immigrants whom it was “hunting down.” He claimed further economic prosperity as long as attacks on immigrants continue: “We have tremendous growth and we have closed borders.”

He also attacked Spain. “In the case of France and all of Europe, you saw what happened in Spain where they bum rushed Spain. They came in by the tens of thousands, all just poured right into Spain. And Spain’s not doing anything about it.”

In fact, the Socialist Party (PSOE)-Sumar government led a vicious, right-wing government response when around 70,000 people in July crossed or attempted to cross into Ceuta, Spain’s North African enclave. Madrid deployed the army alongside police, blocked access to mainland Spain and worked with Morocco to carry out mass expulsions. The government subsequently boasted that around 90 percent had been expelled.

Trump’s demand is for an intensification of an anti-immigrant offensive already being carried out by European capitalist governments, including those led by nominally “left” parties.

Turning again to France, Trump, who is currently overseeing the “renovation” of the White House and the closure of the Kennedy Center, insisted that immigrants hated the countries in which they lived. “They don’t like the buildings, they don’t like the art, they don’t like anything about the country and they don’t like the people. They have no reason not to do what they did in France.”

He said he had warned his “friend President Macron” that if “you don’t stop the immigration problem you are not going to have a country left,” and had delivered the same message to Germany and Britain. After denouncing London’s mayor, he demanded: “If they don’t stop it and remove people and I’m not just talking about some, you got to remove people. Get them the hell out.”

The leader of the failed coup of January 6, 2021 added, “You are going to have to remove those people that are insurrectionists. You are going to have to get them out of the country. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, we won’t take anymore.’”

Later, he explicitly dismissed the grievances that had brought students into struggle: “It’s not about education, it’s about immigration. It’s about illegal people coming in who basically hate France, they hate the people, they hate everything.”

Trump praised Vice President JD Vance’s October 17 post, which declared: “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion.” Vance added, “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” White House adviser Stephen Miller reposted the statement.

The claim that the Democrats support immigrant rights or workers and students protesting is a fraud. Under Joe Biden, Democrats virtually eliminated asylum and attempted to pass, with Republican support, an over $20 billion border-police-state bill that would have also provided funding for Trump’s border wall. The Democrats do not oppose Trump, they are his loyal collaborators.

Trump’s attacks on immigrants included fresh threats against Rep. Ilhan Omar. The Minnesota Democrat’s Washington home was raided on October 12 by Homeland Security Investigation agents and several of her family members and friends have received subpoenas regarding immigration paperwork filed by her now-deceased father when Omar was a teenager.

Asked whether Omar could be deported if there were “a problem with her age,” Trump replied: “She could be. She could also go to jail. She could also go to jail. You know they keep talking about deportation, no she could go to jail.”

He continued: “This is just my opinion, I think she’s a sick, a very dishonest person, who hates our country. And she comes from a country that is essentially not even a country, Somalia. It’s a real shit house, ok?”

Trump claimed that Omar’s election was attributable to “Somalians” voting for her. Omar represents Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, which includes all of Minneapolis and surrounding suburbs. Approximately 58 percent of its residents are non-Hispanic white, according to the Census Reporter’s presentation of 2024 American Community Survey data. Trump’s attribution of Omar’s election to Somali American citizens’ participation is aimed at casting her, and all non-Republican victories, as illegitimate.

Earlier, Trump praised right-wing propagandist Nick Shirley for videos attacking immigrants in Minnesota. He accused “the Somali community” of “stealing billions and billions of dollars, taxpayer money through fraudulent childcare centers and scams.” He then pronounced Governor Tim Walz “100 percent guilty” and implicated Attorney General Keith Ellison and Omar.

“They all knew. That little, little Congresswoman, lovely little woman she is, she knew they all knew, scammers and thieves so bad for our country.”

Miller elaborated the same racial narrative, portraying Somali immigrants as beneficiaries of Democratic patronage who establish fraudulent businesses and live in luxury at workers’ expense. He contrasted them with “you, the American citizen who has worked their entire life” and declared: “That’s what the Democrat Party did to you.”

The purpose of this agitation is to divide the working class with racism. Just as Hitler blamed the “Judeo- Bolshevik” or “Jewish Bolshevism” in Nazi Germany, today’s oligarchs blame “Muslims,” “immigrants” and “socialism” for the destruction of living standards.

The protests in France and across Europe arise from opposition to growing inequality, the gutting of education and public services and the diversion of society’s resources into war. The ruling classes in France, the United States and internationally have no progressive answer to these grievances because they arise from the capitalist system they defend.

Scapegoating immigrants substitutes a nationalist explanation for a class crisis. Trump’s alarm over a “full-on revolution” reveals his fear that American workers and students will recognize their own conditions in the struggles unfolding in Europe. French workers, immigrant workers and American workers confront the same system of exploitation and the same turn toward dictatorship.

The answer is the international unity of the working class, organized independently of the capitalist parties and the union bureaucracies. The defense of immigrants and democratic rights must be joined to the struggle against austerity, imperialist war and the capitalist oligarchy.