US pulls Trump January visit to UK amid war of words with May
AMERICAN diplomats have dropped plans for Donald Trump to visit Britain in January, amid a war of words between the countries’ leaders.
The US president had been pencilled in for a “working visit” in the new year to open the new US embassy in London. The trip, a scaled-down version of a state visit with no meeting with the Queen, was intended to allow Mr Trump to come to the UK and avoid the mass protests a full state visit would likely trigger.
However, it was reported last night that the trip has been postponed indefinitely, with no new date planned. A senior US 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 Theresa May and Mr Trump deteriorating in a public spat over the US president’s tweeting of videos posted by Britain First, a far-right Group.
The prime minister yesterday used her first public comments on the matter to rebuke Mr Trump, saying he was “wrong” to share the videos. Doing nothing to disguise her frustration, Mrs May denounced Britain First as a “hateful organisation” that “seeks to spread mistrust and division within our communities”.
She also appeared to question America’s record of keeping the far-right in check and poked fun at Mr Trump’s love of Twitter by saying she rarely looked at the social media platform.
Kim Darroch, the British ambassador in Washington, has formally complained to the White House about Mr Trump’s behaviour.
The row over the retweets is the most serious breakdown in trust between Mrs May and Mr Trump since he took office and throws into question her decision to forge close ties to him.
The spat began when Mr Trump shared three apparently anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First, with his 44 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 Mrs May’s own spokesman.
But Mr 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 Mrs May to rescind the offer of a formal state visit to Mr Trump, made in January this year but still yet to take place.
The ‘Telegraph’ has now learned that a briefer initial visit, pencilled in for January, has also been put off.
A well-placed source confirmed that a January visit would not be happening but said the decision was not linked to the Twitter row.
Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, said yestereay that Mr Trump would not be welcome in the capital. “After this latest incident, it is increasingly clear any official visit at all from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed,” he said.
Asked about the threat of right-wing groups like Britain First and whether Mr Trump was enabling them to gain legitimacy by retweeting their messages, Mrs May said: “I think that we must all take seriously the threat that farright groups pose and both in terms of the terrorist threat that is posed by those groups and the necessity of dealing with extremist material which is far-right as well.
“I have commented in the past on issues in the United States on this matter.
“In the United Kingdom we take the far-right very seriously and that is why we ensure that we deal with these threats and this extremism wherever it comes and whatever its source.”
She warned the UK will not be afraid to rebuke America, despite the so-called special relationship, when she feels Mr Trump has got something wrong. “The fact that we work together does not mean that we are afraid to say when we think the United States has got it wrong and be very clear with them,” she said. (© Daily Telegraph, London)