.....politely inform them there would be no United States of America without France.....
Remember as well that the French nobles who fought for the cause cause of freedom in America succumed to the revolutionaries in France. The French to whom the debt is owed died in the Revolution as it exterminated the nobility and all who weren't in absolute lock step.
The story of the French helping America is a lie.
Individual Frenchmen helped but we had to fight France almost immediately after we got free from the brits.
They were only trying to regain their North American colonies.
few people remember that war because it was so easy.