Trump’s UK visit called off after Twitter tiff

WASHINGTON • American diplomats have dropped plans for President Donald Trump to visit Britain in January, amid a war of words between the countries’ leaders.

The president had been pencilled in for a “working visit” in the new year to open the new U.S. embassy in London. The trip, a scaled-down version of a state visit with no meeting with the Queen, was intended to allow Trump to come to the UK and avoid the mass protests a full state visit would likely trigger.

However, the trip has been postponed indefinitely, with no new date planned. A senior U.S. diplomat said: “The idea of a visit has obviously been floated, but not December and not January. I would not expect a Trump visit in January.”

It comes with relations between British Prime Minister Theresa May and Trump deteriorating in a public spat over the president’s tweeting of videos posted by Britain First, a farright Group.

May Thursday used her first public comments on the matter to rebuke Trump. During a visit to Jordan, May said: “Retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do.”

Doing nothing to disguise her frustration, May denounced Britain First as a “hateful organization” that “seeks to spread mistrust and division within our communities.”

She also appeared to question the U.S. record of keeping the far-right in check and poked fun at Trump’s love of Twitter by saying she rarely looked at the social media platform.

Sir Kim Darroch, the British Ambassador in Washington, has formally complained to the White House about Trump’s behaviour.

The row over the retweets is the most serious breakdown in trust between May and Trump since he took office and throws into question her decision to forge close ties to him.

The spat began when Trump shared three apparently anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, with his 43 million followers on Twitter.

They purported to show a “Muslim migrant” attacking a Dutch boy, a Muslim destroying a Virgin Mary statue and an “Islamist mob” pushing a teenager to his death from a roof.

Some of the information in the messages proved incorrect and the tweets drew condemnation from cabinet ministers and May’s own spokesman.

But Trump tweeted: "@ Theresa–May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!”

The comment escalated calls for May to rescind the offer of a formal state visit to Trump, which was made in January but is yet to happen. The Telegraph has now learned that a briefer initial visit, pencilled in for January, has also been put off.