Trump Says NFL Should Have Postponed Its Paris Game as France Puts 70,000 Police on the Streets

President Trump said Friday that the NFL should have thought twice about playing in Paris this weekend. The Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints meet Sunday at the Stade de France in the first regular-season NFL game ever played in France, one day after a country still cleaning up from last weekend's riots braces for another round of protests.

"You worry about it," Trump told reporters at the White House as he left for a rally in Florida. "I think it looks like tomorrow is going to be a bad day in France so you worry about it. I would have said the NFL could have probably postponed that match. France is really in trouble. That's what happens when you go left. That's what happens when you allow unlimited numbers of people into your country from very unfriendly countries" (USA Today; AP).

In Paris, the government was already treating Saturday like a siege.

A weekend under guard

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said Friday that about 70,000 police and gendarmes will be on duty across France on Saturday, including elite units normally used for counterterrorism and hostage rescues, backed by water cannon, armored vehicles, mounted police, helicopters and drones. "We are not talking about a peaceful, friendly demonstration," he told reporters after a meeting chaired by President Emmanuel Macron. "We are ready tomorrow to be extremely firm and not tolerate anything" (The Guardian).

The Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay and other Paris landmarks will close Saturday (AP). Paris police asked French soccer's top league to move Sunday night's Paris Saint-Germain match against Lyon to Monday, a shift first reported by The Athletic's Leon Imber (ProFootballTalk). The point of the move, as USA Today explained, is to take pressure off the same police force that will be guarding the NFL game and the center of the city.

The U.S. State Department put out its own warning late Thursday. "Numerous groups submitted plans for protests on Saturday, October 24. Americans in Paris for the NFL game on Sunday, October 25 should also exercise caution and be aware of their surroundings," the alert said, adding that "protests can occur outside planned routes" (The Independent). The Steelers had already scrapped a "Steelers House" fan event in the Bastille neighborhood "following recent events" there (NBC News).

Who is coming Saturday

The people planning Saturday are not hiding much. A Fox News Digital investigation by Asra Nomani mapped 287 groups behind this weekend's mobilization, including 50 that openly call themselves Antifa, 27 communist, socialist or Trotskyist organizations and 24 labor unions. The nationwide "Acte II" campaign, meant to repeat last week's chaos, had 649 actions planned as of Friday morning, including at 21 train stations, three ports, two oil depots and a refinery (Fox News).

One detail should catch the NFL's eye. Buses for a separate Antifa-backed rally against Marine Le Pen's party in Orléans are set to leave Saturday morning from Saint-Denis, and a group calling itself Saint-Denis Antifa has been raising money for the weekend, Fox found. Saint-Denis is the suburb where the Stade de France sits. Organizers are already lining up an "Acte III" for Oct. 31, a strike and blockade day on Nov. 5 and a Europe-wide action on Nov. 20 (Fox News).

The NFL says it's fine

The league has not budged. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday that his comfort level was "very high" and that he had spoken with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "Protests are not unusual in France, as you know," he said. "We're guests in the country, we're going to be good guests, and we're going to do our thing, and I'm confident they're going to do theirs" (NBC News).

Peter O'Reilly, the NFL executive who runs its international games, said the league was "never close" to moving the game and remains "confident in our operational and security plans" (USA Today; OutKick). The league's security chief, former Washington, D.C., police chief Cathy Lanier, has been in Paris for days (NBC News). The NFL has moved games for emergencies before, shifting a Los Angeles Rams playoff game in January 2025 as wildfires burned across Southern California (NBC News).

The players are taking it in stride, carefully. "If it was unsafe, then I'm sure we wouldn't be here," Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said Friday at the team's Paris hotel (Al Jazeera). Defensive lineman Cam Heyward was blunter on The Rich Eisen Show: "No traveling alone, make sure we stay in groups and don't wander off too far." Then he added the quiet part: "The NFL likes money, so we're not missing that opportunity" (NBC News).

Playing on Sunday is a bit like throwing a tailgate the morning after a house fire on your block, while the fire trucks are still parked out front. It can probably be done. The question Trump asked is whether it should be.

Macron calls it 'stupid.' Washington doesn't blink

Trump has been the loudest foreign voice on France for weeks, and Paris has noticed. Visiting Qatar on Wednesday, Macron said that "manipulation of information" after last weekend's riots had led to "comments that are as unacceptable as they are stupid, from many people, including foreign leaders." Asked whether he meant Trump, he said: "Among others" (The Guardian).

The State Department answered Friday. Spokesman Tommy Pigott told Fox News Digital that the president "is on point as he is consistently on point." "Mass migration is inherently destabilizing," Pigott said. "It is something that we don't believe solves problems, but actually creates problems." He went on: "So the president is spot on, he's bringing attention to this issue, he is taking action to address this issue" (Fox News).

The record from last weekend is not on Macron's side. Rioters set Limoges' town hall on fire, 2,397 people were arrested across France and 997 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were hurt, the Interior Ministry said (CNews). French officials say more than 3,000 shops were looted (Fox News), and Macron's own government has admitted it "lost control" of the streets (The Guardian). We covered that weekend in France Didn't Get Here by Accident and Trump's warning that Paris will be "a Muslim city very soon".

What happens next

Saturday's protests are the test. Paris has approved one union march on a limited route between the Bastille and Nation squares that avoids the city center, while rallies by the main student union and the yellow vest movement were refused (The Guardian). Le Pen's National Rally holds its party congress in Orléans the same weekend, with the Antifa counter-rally planned outside (Fox News).

Kickoff at the Stade de France is 3:30 p.m. Sunday in Paris, about six miles from the neighborhoods hit hardest by last week's looting (USA Today). If the weekend stays calm, the NFL gets its party. If it doesn't, the league will have to explain why it played the game a president of the United States said it should have postponed.