Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
KEVIN MAGUIRE
Obnoxious bully tells truth on trade deal
DONALD Trump might divide America but the rogue President united Great Britain against him.
Shell-shocked Theresa May would have been forgiven if she had slipped out of Chequers yesterday and joined the balloon protest against the lying, rude gasbag.
Trump proved the visitor from hell and I’ll never forgive the Fake News machine for leaving me feeling sorry for a Tory Prime Minister.
He was impolite, dishonest, obnoxious, racist, petty and a coward by denying criticism of her Brexit policy when the bully was clearly heard putting the boot in.
Yet there are two upsides to Trump’s rampage in Britain.
The first is he’s proved Britain is stronger and safer in Europe when the needy “special relationship” is dead under Trump. Quitting the EU has never looked a worse decision when a President who drools over Vladimir Putin displays contempt for Western democratic allies.
The second is he was right, and possibly for the first time in his Presidency, by asserting May’s Brexit would prevent a UK-US trade deal.
The bruised PM will regret this visit long after she has exited Downing Street. May has learned the hard way that doormats are walked all over. IT is the decent majority of Americans I feel most sorry for.
Once again, the man they elected to represent them has the red carpet rolled out for him by a solid ally, and he chooses to take a dump on it, walk his mess into their house and leave a stench that makes his hosts nauseous and outraged.
Those tens of thousands of protesters who yesterday took to the streets that Donald Trump was steered away from were accused by his friends over here of endangering Britain’s future.
They were told that insulting America’s leader would threaten the Special Relationship. But Trump’s incendiary eviscerating of Theresa May’s Brexit plans, indeed her political credibility, on the eve of crucial talks has put that relationship into a specialist burns unit.
The interview he gave to a British newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch (presumably as payback for running Fox News as a North Korean-style Trump propaganda channel), which he typically later claimed to be “fake news”, took the humiliating of British Prime Ministers by US Presidents to a new low. And actually made you feel sorry for May.
TREACHEROUS
At least George Bush showed kindness to his poodle in public. He may have hollered the odd “yo, Blair!” to bring him to heel, but generally rewarded him with treats, let him sit on his lap at his Texas ranch and stroked him in Congress.
But Trump regularly treats May so cruelly you half expect to see Paul O’grady come marching in, swear at him and whisk her off to Battersea Dogs Home... to be put down with kindness.
It wasn’t just the content of the interview, but the timing. As he was being schmoozed and fawned over by the PM at a no-expense-spared black-tie dinner at Blenheim Palace, details of his treacherous mauling of her were going online.
He’s like a psychotic serial killer who can’t help attacking those who try to help him. And because he can’t be bothered to study facts, in case they get in the way of his version of the truth, he lashes out with a pitiful ignorance.
He said of her Brexit White Paper: “The deal she’s striking is a much different deal than the one people voted on.”
Voters weren’t offered any deal. Just two boxes. And the invitation to tick one if you felt life gave you a rough deal and Brexit would somehow make it better.
On immigration: “It has changed the fabric of Europe.” Europe was built on immigration, as was the US.
DISLOYAL
What has most radically changed Europe’s culture is big American firms like Coca-cola, Mcdonald’s, KFC, GAP and Trump Hotels suffocating the individual fabric of their towns and cities.
Not to mention the tax-avoiding likes of Facebook stealing our data and Amazon destroying our high streets.
On Boris Johnson: “I think he’s got what it takes. He’d make a great Prime Minster.” In other words, like me, he’s a disloyal, deceitful, mad-haired, narcissistic pathological liar utterly consumed with a belief he was born to rule; willing to crush anyone, anything, including his nation’s best interests, to achieve power.
The timing of this leadership call for Johnson, as with his slaughtering of May’s Brexit offer, was clearly deliberate.
It was obvious right-wing chums like Nigel Farage and Rupert Murdoch have bent his ear and asked for a direct inter- vention that could lead to May being replaced by a hard-liner who would lead the UK out of the EU with no deal.
At a time when May is fighting for her life in a party split by the cult of Johnson, that was the lowest of blows.
Trump’s false back-tracking at a Chequers press conference yesterday about her being “an incredible woman” doing “a fantastic job” only added to the insult.
It is possible to feel sorry for May, but not too much. She diminishes our country’s standing by allowing Trump to take her hand and walk all over her.
The press conference would have been an ideal chance to strike back at this textbook bully. Once again, she blew it.
Trump goes weak at the knees when meeting male leaders like Kim Jong-un, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin, yet seems to treat women as irrelevancies. Almost as though his misogyny is