US President Donald Trump prompted French condemnation over his depiction of the November 2015 massacre committed by ISIS at the “Bataclan” theater in Paris.
Speaking at an NRA event in Dallas, Texas on Friday, Trump criticized France for its strict gun control laws, asserting that the brutal attack, in which 130 were murdered and nearly 400 wounded, could have been averted if someone in the theater had been carrying a gun.
"Nobody has guns in Paris and we all remember more than 130 people, plus tremendous numbers of people that were horribly, horribly wounded. … They were brutally killed by a small group of terrorists that had guns."
Trump mimicked the ease with which the attackers were able to gun down their victims.
"They took their time and gunned them down one by one. Boom. Come over here. Boom, come over here. Boom."
“The survivors said [the attack] just lasted forever. But if one employee or patron, or one person in this room had been there with a gun aimed in the opposite direction, the terrorists would have fled or been shot, and it would have been a whole different story,” he concluded.
In response, France’s foreign ministry said: "France expresses its firm disapproval of the comments by President Trump about the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris and asks for respect of the memory of the victims."
Former French President Fancois Hollande, who was in office at the time of the attack, tweeted that Trump’s remarks were “shameful” and “obscene,” adding that they “say a lot about what [Trump] thinks of France and its values.”
Manuel Valls, who was French Prime Minister at the time of the attack, also weighed in on Twitter.
“Indecent and Incompetent. What more can I say?”