President Donald Trump said Paris will become a “Muslim city” soon if France doesn’t close its borders to immigrants. His comments come as hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters continue rioting in the Parisian streets.
Page A216From§Eachthe evening edition — 19 October 2026
French officials blame the riots on the ultra-left, then admit their own intelligence failed to see them coming.
As it ran on the front
I spent twenty minutes stuck at the toll plaza on the turnpike this week, the kind where five lanes pinch down to two right past the booths, and I had nothing to do but listen. The driver in the Civic ahead of me was sure it was the E-ZPass lane, backed up because somebody's transponder had died. The woman in the minivan behind me, I could hear her through two rolled-up windows, blamed the cash lane, said they should have closed it years ago. My own wife, who was riding with me, guessed it was the construction two exits back. Three drivers, one jam, three different explanations, and when I finally cleared the booths there was a sign from the turnpike authority that didn't match any of them: a booth had gone unstaffed for forty minutes during a shift change. None of the three drivers was foolish to be annoyed. They were just answering a different question than the one that actually explained the delay.
I bring this up because I've been reading about Paris, and I wrote some of it down, though I'll admit I had to go looking for the page before I could read it back to you.…
…(cont) Here's what I found. There are five separate explanations going around right now for what happened in the riots in France, and I want to walk through all five the way I walked through the Civic, the minivan, and my wife's construction theory, one at a time, because that seems like the only fair way to treat five explanations that don't agree with each other.
One: a magazine called the Federalist reports a network of fifty-four organizations — communists, union activists, and Muslim student and pro-Palestinian groups among them — working together to fuel the protests. Two and three both come from the Washington Examiner, and I want to be careful here, because I had this backwards once already: one Examiner piece says a French parliamentary investigation flagged a Muslim student group as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood; a separate Examiner piece quotes President Trump saying Paris will become a "Muslim city" unless France closes its borders, and it notes hundreds of thousands of people are protesting right now. Four is Speaker Mike Johnson, who told the New York Post that open borders caused the riots and that Democrats could bring the same thing to this country. Five is the French government itself, which told CBS News the trouble came from an "ultra-left movement," and asked for local curfews.
I counted them twice. Communists and Muslims. A Muslim Brotherhood front. A Muslim city. Open borders. An ultra-left movement. Five explanations for one set of riots, and I went looking for two of the five that pointed to the same cause. I found zero.
My car doesn't turn over some mornings without a little coaxing, and when it won't start, I don't guess five things at once — I open the hood and look at the one thing in front of me. France, by its own account, did something closer to that, separately from all five of the explanations above: Fox News reported that Macron ordered a security review after intelligence services underestimated the protests badly enough that sixty thousand police officers were overwhelmed. Not communists. Not Muslims. Not open borders. Not the ultra-left. A security review, into what the services themselves missed.
Oh — before I let this go, one more thing, and I almost didn't write it down twice. It isn't on the Federalist's list, or either Examiner story, or the Speaker's, or even the French government's own curfew announcement. Officers got overwhelmed by something the services themselves didn't see coming until it was already in the street. Which of the five explanations I just read you told you that part first?
“When the people running the show don't see something coming, they don't say that out loud — they hand out a list of enemies instead: communists, Muslims, open borders, the ultra-left, whoever's handy that week. Sixty thousand police got overwhelmed because an intelligence service missed it, and that part is not on any of the five lists making the rounds, because that one's on the agency, not on a student group. Keep the fight going about who to blame, and the people who actually missed it keep their jobs.”
“Fifty-four organizations don't coordinate themselves — communists, a Muslim Brotherhood front, that's not a theory, that's a French parliamentary investigation, I didn't make that up. Open borders have consequences, the Speaker's not wrong to say so, it's just — one open border causing a communist-Islamist-ultra-left pileup all at once, that's, okay, did I just say the same riot has four different masterminds? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
The French are revolting. It’s a tradition with them. Riots are as French as croissants, adultery and the 35-hour work week.
An Islamic student group helping to drive France’s chaotic leftist-driven protests is an alleged Muslim Brotherhood front. Muslim Students of France repeatedly posted on social media in support of the anti-government protests over school conditions that have descended into rioting since last month. A May 2025 French parliamentary…
House Speaker Mike Johnson argued Monday that "open borders" caused a weekend of mayhem across France that brought widespread looting, arson and clashes with police — arguing Democrats could bring similar chaos to the US.
French leaders call for local curfews and say an "ultra-left movement" was behind widespread violence and vandalism amid anti-government protests.
High school students across France on Thursday once again took to the streets to protest against against the state of the country’s schools.
BBC News called France riots "mostly peaceful" as its own footage showed burning cars, looted shops and nearly 1,000 officers injured nationwide.
Nearly 2,000 French high schools are blockaded or closed today amid massive student-led protests over school funding and inequality. The demonstrations began in September at a single school in the economically deprived suburbs of Paris, where students protested teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated school buildings…
Emmanuel Macron ordered a security review after France's intelligence services badly underestimated protests that overwhelmed 60,000 police officers.
The rioters burning and pillaging cities across France are not led primarily by disgruntled students, as corporate media claim, but rather by a red-green alliance of communist activists and Muslim agitators, a recent investigation found. The network is made up of 54 organizations representing communism, revolutionary socialism, unions…
· Behind France's student riots: Communists, unions and a global propaganda network from the morgue, 9 Oct 2026
· Police fire tear gas at barricaded high school in Paris as protests spread to Belgium from the morgue, 8 Oct 2026
· Student protests in France leave hundreds of schools closed from the morgue, 2 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.