Trump to visit France for D-Day 75th anniversary
US President Donald Trump is to visit Normandy in June this year for the 75th anniversary commemorations of D-Day, he has said.
Mr Trump made the announcement during a reception of World War II veterans in the Presidential Oval Office, at the White House, in Washington DC.
He said: “I’ll be there, I’ll be there.”
The event now known as “D-Day” - or “the Normandy landings” - took place on June 6, 1944.
Code-named “Neptune”, it is often judged to have been a turning point in the war, marking the beginning of France’s liberation from Nazi control, despite causing the loss of 9,000 Allied soldiers.
Mr Trump will not be the first US President to attend the commemoration events in recent years.
Former US President Barack Obama visited Normandy in 2014, for the 70th anniversary events, joining then-French President François Hollande, Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
In a speech made at the time, Mr Obama said that veterans involved in the operation had helped tell the “story of the Allied victory” and “all those French men and women who would rather have died resisting tyranny than lived within its grasp”.
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He added: “What we must not forget is that D-Day was a time and a place where the bravery and the selflessness of a few was able to change the course of an entire century.”
Mr Trump is also set to visit France in August this year, as part of the G7 summit in Biarritz.
