Trump Points Kansas Voters to France, Threatens NATO Exit. The Record Is More Complicated

Written By TNT Staff, Posted on October 20, 2026

Featured photo: President Donald Trump speaks at a July 3, 2025 rally in Des Moines, Iowa. Official White House photo by Daniel Torok, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

President Donald Trump took his midterm push to Park City, Kansas, on Sunday night. His message for Kansas voters was to look across the Atlantic. At a rally for Sen. Roger Marshall, who faces Democrat Adam Hamilton in November, Trump told the crowd France was falling apart. He also said the U.S. could walk away from NATO if Europe doesn’t change course.

“If you want to see what is at stake in this election, just look at what’s happening in France, a once great nation that is being conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists and communists who hate Christianity,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the rally. “And they hate, frankly, the Western civilization itself.”

The violence in France is real. The record does not support Trump’s account of who is behind it.

What Trump said

Trump blamed Europe’s leaders. “Globalist left wing politicians have treasonously imported millions and millions of Third World migrants who are totally incompatible with the West, and they are incompatible with Western values,” he said. He said France had “surrendered” to people “who refuse to assimilate into their society, but only want to enter the welfare state paid for by hardworking citizens of France.”

He said he had warned French President Emmanuel Macron to “close your border or you will lose France.”

He then turned to NATO. “We stand with Europe despite its flaws, its weaknesses,” Trump said. “But if they don’t soon find their way, and they have to find their way, we will have no choice but to leave, to leave. We will have no choice. It’s a very serious situation.”

He tied the threat to the Iran war. “When we asked for help in Iran, help which we didn’t need, we didn’t need but I wanted — I was testing,” he said. “They weren’t there to help.” He added: “We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO protecting them. But when we said would you like to help, no, thank you.”

What happened in France

The violence Trump described came on Saturday, Oct. 17, a national day of protest. France’s Interior Ministry counted 550,000 marchers, 110,000 of them in Paris. The CGT union claimed 800,000. Weeks of high school protests over teacher shortages, packed classrooms and crumbling buildings had grown into a broader revolt over fuel prices, the cost of living and public services. Unions, farmers and firefighters joined in.

Much of the day ended in chaos. The Interior Ministry reported 2,397 arrests nationwide and 997 police officers and gendarmes injured, seven of them seriously. Paris police called their 855 arrests a record. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin said 2,513 people were held in custody over the weekend and 67 were jailed. France’s chambers of commerce counted more than 2,000 shops looted or vandalized.

In Limoges, rioters forced their way into the 1883 city hall and set it on fire while staff and visitors were still inside, according to the regional prefect. The building’s bell tower and much of its roof collapsed, franceinfo reported. The prefect said the attackers’ “only objective” was “to burn, to smash and to loot.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez admitted to “a loss of control” and “a lack of anticipation.” He offered to resign, and Macron refused. So “looted” and “burned” are fair words for what France saw on Saturday.

Where Trump overstates

French officials have not blamed migrants or jihadists for the riots. Nuñez blamed “several thousand individuals from the ultra-left” and “delinquents who looted and ransacked numerous shops.” That makes the “communists” part of Trump’s line closer to what French officials themselves are saying than the rest of it. The Justice Ministry said 87% of those held over violence linked to the high school movement were minors. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said most were 15 or 16 and unknown to police.

None of the official figures TNT reviewed break down arrests by nationality or immigration status. Nothing we found ties the violence to Islamist groups. The Kansas City Star rated Trump’s migrant framing false.

TNT also found no report of a church burned in the riots. That undercuts Trump’s later line about “burning steeples and raging fires in France.” The tower that fell in Limoges was a city hall’s.

Macron, for his part, drew the line Trump blurred. He said legitimate demands must never be confused with “those who destroyed, smashed, looted,” and that “nothing justifies” the violence.

Trump’s broader warning still has a basis. France’s statistics agency, INSEE, counts 7.7 million immigrants in France, 11.3% of the population. Integration, crime in some suburbs and Islamist radicalism are open, often bitter debates in French politics, and they will be central to the April 2027 presidential race. Voters can weigh those arguments on the merits. But Saturday’s riots, as French authorities describe them, are not an example of them.

The NATO point

On Iran, Trump is closer to the mark. When he asked allies in March to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the answer from most of Europe was no, NBC News reported. “This is not our war, we have not started it,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said. Spain refused outright. Italy declined. Britain said it would not be drawn into “the wider war.”

The spending line needs context. The U.S. does spend hundreds of billions a year on defense, much of it on forces that protect Europe. But that money isn’t paid “on NATO” directly. The alliance’s shared budget is a small fraction of that.

The threat to leave is the bigger news. A sitting president telling a campaign crowd the U.S. “will have no choice but to leave” if Europe doesn’t “find their way” puts allies on notice. Washington has often accused them of free-riding, and their refusal to help on Iran gives Trump new ammunition. Whether the threat is leverage or a plan, Europe’s capitals will be listening.

Trump also repeated claims about Kansas and Michigan races that fact-checkers have challenged. Those include an unsupported suggestion that Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, which TNT examined Sunday.