France requests the return
of the Statue of Liberty

Decision motivated by “incomprehensible results of the 2024 election”

By Distraught American

November 21, 2024

REPRISE DE POSSESSION

Ministère des Cadeaux Internationaux
de la République Française

To the Government of the United States of America:

This is to inform you that France is taking back the Statue of Liberty.

The Statue of Liberty was given to your country by our country in 1886 as a gift of friendship. Since we presented her to you over a century and a half ago, there have been more than just a few things that have made us wonder why we kept on being friends: Your prudishness regarding sex. Your self-absorbtion. Your sheer decibel level. But, in the end, we shook our heads and laughed a little laugh and said to ourselves, “We must give our young friend time.”

And, to be sure, there were some fine moments: the tears of the Eastern European Jews as they sailed into New York Harbor; those fireworks bursting around her during the bicentennial; her cameo alongside a naked Daryl Hannah in Splash.

But now the time for the shaking of heads and the laughing is past.

But to elect him [Trump] a second time… knowing that he is the antithesis of all things Lady Liberty was created to symbolize. Well, that is really too much.

Never in the history of our country have we ever had to take back a gift we bestowed upon another nation. I can assure you, for example, that there is, at this time, no talk of repossessing the giant grasshopper-shaped wine cooler we presented to Britain in 1976. None whatsoever.

Only the incomprehensible results of the 2024 election could motivate us to blemish so unblemished a record. Your election of Donald Trump the first time was incomprehensible enough, but show me a nation that hasn’t had to contend with one corrupt tyrant or another at some point in its history.

But to elect him a second time… knowing that he is the antithesis of all things Lady Liberty was created to symbolize. Well, that is really too much.

Pursuant to this, we will be sending a crew from the Bureau des Cadeaux Internationales to disassemble and box up the statue and load these boxes onto the special Cadeaux Internationales Carrier Ships we will send for just this purpose. The United States will pay all shipping costs.

The Government of France retains sole discretion over what is to be done with Mademoiselle la Liberté once she is back on French soil. Right now we are thinking that we will put her arm and torch in the Champ de Mars between la Tour Eiffel and l’École Militaire. And we are going to let French citizens climb to the top.

While we cannot deny that it is not impossible that, somewhere down the road, our two countries will find a way to be friends once again, neither can we foresee a time when that might happen. Right now, it is better for us not to be in touch at all, though we will maintain cordiality when we meet, we cannot promise that it will not be icy.

Yours truly,

Secrétaire d’État
Ministre chargé des Cadeaux Internationaux

Feature image: Pixabay

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Distraught American is a political satirist who is humiliated to be a citizen of a country in which just under 50% of the other citizens thought it was a good idea to send a man who has already done such damage to the world back to the White House to do more damage. She would like to move to Canada and is brushing up on her French.