Paris Cleans Up After Demonstrators Erupted into Violence
WHITFIELD: Welcome back. As France cleans up from a second weekend in a violent protest against rising gas prices President Trump is weighing in, tying the protests to trade, saying, "The large and violent French protests don't take into account how badly the United States has been treated on trade by the European Union or on fair and reasonable payments for our great military protection. Both of these topics must be remedied soon." Yesterday police confronted hundreds of violent protesters along the Champs-Elysees, firing tear gas and water cannons. CNN's Jim Bittermann is in Paris. So, Jim, how does it look today?</s>JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's a little bit better tonight, and not a lot of tear gas in the air, Fredricka. In fact, though, that tweet from President Trump left a lot of people here just scratching their heads trying to figure out exactly how he was connecting the dots. There was nothing about yesterday's protest that had anything to do with trade or military protection. This was a protest which demonstrators were out to show their anger about rising fuel prices, about stagnant wages, and about rising cost of living in general. And so there was no connection and no reaction at all to President Trump's tweets from either the presidential palace or the prime minister's office or the Foreign Ministry. However, some of the news organizations here did in fact make an attempt to connect the various things, and they've basically I think, believed that this was an attempt by President Trump to kick President Macron in a sore spot, mainly the protests along the Champs-Elysees. It was along those avenue just a couple of hundred yards off the lay here two weeks ago that during the ceremonies commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, that Macron made a speech that many felt humiliated President Trump. It was a speech basically about the benefits of multi-multilateralism, something which clearly President Trump doesn't believe here -- Ana.</s>WHITFIELD: All right.</s>BITTERMANN: Fred, sorry.</s>WHITFIELD: I'm Fredricka, but that's OK. We're all interchangeable.</s>WHITFIELD: All right. Jim Bittermann, thank you so much from Paris. All right. Still ahead, much more from the NEWSROOM.