France Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing

 

France Summons U.S. Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing

 

Charles Kushner, President Trump’s envoy to Paris, was called in after the State Department cited “violent radical leftism” in the beating death of Quentin Deranque, 23.

 

Mark Landler

By Mark Landler

Reporting from Paris

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/world/europe/france-us-ambassador-kushner-activist-killing.html

Feb. 23, 2026

 

A diplomatic tiff has erupted between France and the United States, after the French government summoned the U.S. ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, to protest the State Department’s criticism of a deadly attack this month on a right-wing activist in Lyon.

 

Mr. Kushner failed to show, and on Monday evening, a French diplomatic official said that the foreign ministry would recommend that the ambassador no longer be allowed direct access to French government officials. 

 

The beating death of the activist, Quentin Deranque, 23, caused tensions to spike between the far left and the far right in France. It also reverberated internationally, with the Trump administration and the right-wing prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, both raising concerns — and rankling French officials in the process.

 

President Trump has made championing Europe’s far right a centerpiece of his approach to the continent, partly through his administration’s National Security Strategy, which pledged to bolster European “patriotic parties.”

 

It is the second time that Mr. Kushner, the father of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has run afoul of the French government since he took up his post in July 2025. He was called in to the Foreign Ministry weeks after his arrival when he accused France of not doing enough to combat antisemitism.

 

This time, it was not something that Mr. Kushner had said himself but his embassy’s reposting of State Department comments about the killing of Mr. Deranque, which occurred after skirmishes between far-left and far-right supporters on the sidelines of a university conference about the Middle East.

 

In its post on social media, the State Department said the incident “should concern us all,” adding that “violent radical leftism is on the rise and its role in Quentin Deranque’s death demonstrates the threat it poses to public safety.”

 

The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, confirmed the decision to summon Mr. Kushner on Sunday. He told a French broadcaster that his government rejected efforts to exploit the killing for political purposes and that the United States should not interfere in an internal French matter.

 

“We refuse to allow this tragedy, which has plunged a French family into mourning, to be exploited for political ends,” Mr. Barrot said. “We have no lessons to learn from the reactionary international movement, particularly when it comes to violence.”

 

The Trump administration has not hesitated to call out European countries for what its officials portray as the mistreatment and marginalization of right-wing voices. The attack on Mr. Deranque has drawn comparisons to the assassination in September of Charlie Kirk, an ally of Mr. Trump’s, which officials immediately blamed on left-wing forces.

 

The American Embassy did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, either on the summons or Mr. Kushner’s loss of access to French officials. He did not appear in person the last time he was summoned to the French Foreign Ministry, sending a deputy in his place. It was not clear whether he did the same on Monday.

 

In that case, the summons came after Mr. Kushner published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron in The Wall Street Journal, in which he said France was not doing enough to oppose a surge in antisemitism.

 

“In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized,” Mr. Kushner wrote. “Today, many French Jews fear that history will repeat itself in Europe.”

 

The ambassador’s decision not to respond to the second summons clearly rankled French officials. The diplomatic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Mr. Kushner appeared not to understand one of the basic expectations of an ambassador’s mission. He held out hope that Mr. Kushner would yet appear at the ministry, on the Quai d’Orsay, in Paris.

 

In addition to the State Department’s post on Mr. Deranque, Sarah B. Rogers, the under secretary of state for public diplomacy, posted that the United States would keep a close eye on the case.

 

“Democracy rests on a basic bargain: you get to bring any viewpoint to the public square, and nobody gets to kill you for it,” she wrote. “This is why we treat political violence — terrorism — so harshly.”

 

The attack also set off a diplomatic contretemps between France and Italy. After Ms. Meloni called it a “wound for all of Europe,” Mr. Macron said, “I’m always struck by how people who are nationalists, who don’t want to be bothered in their own country, are always the first ones to comment on what’s happening in other countries.”

 

Mark Landler is the Paris bureau chief of The Times, covering France, as well as American foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.