Donald Trump and JD Vance deployed a familiar US playbook on Europe, claiming that immigrants were responsible for rioting in France that began as student protests against crumbling schools and the high cost of living.

The nationwide protests on Saturday were called over rising fuel prices and falling purchasing power, and in several cities they escalated into clashes with police that left a historic town hall torched and led to 1,800 arrests. On Monday, overnight curfews were issued for a number of French cities, including parts of Paris.

“France is burning!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, blaming “the immigration of people from an entirely different world” for the violence and looting.

He urged Paris to “Close your Borders and take control”.

Vance, a day earlier, argued that the unrest was the result of what he called a liberal failure. “Western liberals imported the third world into France,” he wrote on X, adding that the country had “ignored fundamental questions about assimilation and compatibility”.

The rhetoric echoes France’s far-right National Rally, whose president, Jordan Bardella, described the violence as a convergence of ultra-left extremism and delinquent populations from the suburbs. Trump and Vance have both publicly backed Marine Le Pen, and the unrest has added pressure on Emmanuel Macron six months before an April election to choose his successor.

The demonstrations in France began weeks ago, when high school students began marching for teacher shortages, crumbling classrooms and an opaque university admissions system. The CGT, one of France’s largest unions, has backed the movement and called for lower prices, higher pensions and better wages. The anger has since widened to fuel prices, which have climbed since US strikes effectively shut the strait of Hormuz, and other economic grievances.

As Trump set off for a campaign rally in Kansas on Monday, the US president told reporters at the White House that he had warned Macron he was “making a big mistake”.

“The whole world was coming in, and as you know, Paris is going to be a Muslim city very soon, and that wasn’t the deal,” he said, adding: “We closed our borders. He didn’t.”

Not all protests have drawn the same attention from Washington, as young people have taken to the streets across Europe, in Spain, Portugal and Italy, over underfunded schools, housing costs and a wider squeeze on living standards.

Neither have the US president and vice-president commented on protests in Albania, where demonstrators have targeted both the government and a luxury tourism development backed by an investment firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

Before Trump arrived on stage in Park City, Kansas, giant TV screens played about 10 minutes’ of Fox News coverage of the unrest that has gripped Paris and other cities, which included commentary blaming the trouble on the French government’s immigration policies.

Earlier in the day, the official White House X account posted: “If you import the third world, you become the third world.” An array of Republican politicians have lined up to make a similar argument, seeking to leverage the unrest in France against Congressional Democrats ahead of the 3 November midterms, in which their party faces significant headwinds.

House Speaker Mike Johnson posted: “France is descending into chaos because they wanted OPEN BORDERS — just like the socialist Democrats in America. What we are witnessing is a chilling warning for all Americans of what happens if the radical Marxist insurgent left gets their way.” Senator Eric Schmitt added: “The anti-civilization Left is devouring France. It will devour America if we let it.”

The vice president said he hoped Americans were paying attention as they cast their ballots.

“This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country,” he concluded.

David Smith contributed reporting from Park City, Kansas