During a recent press conference with French journalists, French president Francois Hollande said that Donald Trump made people “want to retch.”
Hollande also said the increasingly authoritarian tone from the Republican nominee for U.S. President could shift politics to the right in other countries, and that a win for Trump in November would have global repercussions.
“In the U.S., one of the world’s great democracies, maybe the greatest democracy, where democracy was born, before the French one, we see some excesses that are sickening,” Hollande said on Tuesday. “Democracy is also at stake, as we see more and more people tempted by authoritarianism.”
“Should the American people choose Trump,” he said, “there will be consequences because a U.S. Election is a global election. His excesses make you want to retch, even in the United States, especially when—as was Donald Trump’s case—he speaks ill of a soldier, of the memory of a soldier.”
Hollande’s remarks are in response to Donald Trump’s attack on the parents of a Muslim U.S. Soldier killed in Iraq, which the French President said was “hurtful and humiliating.”
Hollande went on to say that a victory for Trump could also influence French politics, and that a win that was once “unthinkable” is now “foreseeable.”
“The U.S. Campaign provides themes that will then come into the French campaign,” he said.
Hollande’s remarks come only a day after President Obama said Trump is “unfit” to serve as President and that he “keeps on proving it,” marking one of Obama’s strongest attacks on the Republican nominee yet.