Trump dismissive of British PM May

WASHINGTON • Donald Trump has been privately unimpressed with British Prime Minister Theresa May in meetings and wishes she was a stronger leader, allies of the U.S. president have told The Daily Telegraph.

Trump believes May lacks charisma, and raged when she criticized him for retweeting videos from the farright group Britain First.

One friend of the president even claimed Trump had never heard of the term “special relationship” to describe U.K.-U.S. ties before he entered politics.

Trump will visit Britain next month for the first time since taking office, giving May a chance to improve her relationship with the U.S. leader. But the picture painted by numerous aides and allies is one of disconnection, with the leaders failing to see eye-to-eye, thanks to different personalities and policy agendas.

Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, said the White House was underwhelmed when May first met the president last January in Washington.

Bannon, who sat in on the meetings, said: “Everything to Trump is personal. For him and May there was no click, there was no chemistry. May just does not have the charisma. That’s not her fault, you’ve either got it or you don’t.”

Chris Ruddy, a friend of Trump and the CEO of Newsmax Media, revealed that the president had expressed anger over May’s Britain First criticism.

“He was very upset,” recalled Ruddy, who was at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort. “He thought she was overly critical and overly harsh … over the top.” Another senior Trump campaign source said of the president: “He wishes Britain had a stronger leader.”

More broadly, Trump is angry with Europe — even the world. It is based on the reality that the U.S. spends 3.6 per cent of the biggest GDP on earth continuing to be the external security guarantor for three of the world’s richest regions (Europe, the Mideast and Southeast Asia) and gets no thanks for it.

The more important fact from a U.K. perspective is that he is not remotely impressed by its national pretension to be America’s greatest ally. In fact, he almost certainly thinks that, if there is any European country that needs to do more, it is Britain.

HE THOUGHT SHE WAS OVERLY CRITICAL AND OVERLY HARSH … OVER THE TOP