French President Francois Hollande gives a press conference on June 29 at the European Union headquarters in Brussels. | Getty French President Hollande endorses Clinton

French President François Hollande endorsed Hillary Clinton in a newspaper article published Thursday, likening Republican Donald Trump’s nativist bombast to anti-immigrant movements across Europe.

Hollande said “the best thing the Democrats can do is to get Hillary Clinton elected” in the article, published Thursday in France’s Les Echos newspaper. The socialist president also said electing Trump “would complicate relations between Europe and the U.S." and agreed with the notion that it would be dangerous.


Trump’s isolationist rhetoric likely sounds familiar to Hollande, who faces strong opposition from Marine Le Pen, the outspoken leader of France’s National Front party. Le Pen, a vocal immigration opponent, has called for France to follow in the footsteps of the United Kingdom and leave the European Union.

Holland compared Trump’s pledges on immigration, including promises to build a southern border wall and temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, to rhetoric from Le Pen and other European nationalist leaders.

The presumptive Republican nominee’s “slogans are barely different from the extreme right in Europe and in France,” Hollande said, accusing Trump of inciting “fear of waves of immigrants, the stigmatization of Islam, the questioning of representative democracy and the denunciation of elites," even as Trump, by his wealth, "is the most obvious representation" of that which he denounces.

Nick Gass contributed translation from the French.