Trump blames ‘bad deal’ for London trip cancellation
President was to open new embassy
LONDON — President Donald Trump late Thursday said he had decided not to come to London to open the new U.S. Embassy, blaming the Obama administration for doing a “bad deal” to move the diplomatic mission.
“Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars,” the president asserted in his latenight tweet. “Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbonNO!”
Many Londoners on Friday offered their own reasons for Mr. Trump canceling a possible trip to the British capital: He was nervous about the expected protests that could greet him.
The cancellation was welcomed by Mr. Trump’s many critics in Britain on Friday, even as it deepened the diplomatic problems confronting a British government struggling to forge closer ties to Washington without offending opinion at home.
“It seems he’s finally got the message,” wrote London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, after saying that Mr. Trump is not welcome in London while he pursues a “divisive agenda.”
With Britain to leave the European Union in 2019, Prime Minister Theresa May hopes to negotiate a new trade agreement with the United States, and the state visit was partly seen as a way of cementing ties with Mr. Trump.
But while Britons may pride themselves on their “special relationship” with the United States, that does not appear to extend to its president. A petition calling for the invitation to be withdrawn was signed by more than 1.8 million people, the issue was debated in Parliament, and large-scale protests were threatened.
Still, at least one prominent British Cabinet official took no joy in the gloating. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson — a former mayor of London — accused the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Mr. Khan of endangering the “crucial relationship” between the United States and Britain. He even got in an extra jab at Mr. Khan, calling him a “puffed up pompous popinjay.”
Some British officials also reportedly believed that Mr. Trump decided not to come because he felt the arrangements for the visit were too low key.
The old United States Embassy, in a famous square in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood, was deemed to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The new one, which includes a small moat, is a high-tech construction in a former rail yard.
Though Mr. Trump blamed the Obama administration for the move, the decision to move the embassy from its historic location in Grosvenor Square was made under then-President George W. Bush and announced in October 2008.
U.S. officials said it would have taken several years and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring the old embassy, completed in 1960, up to standard. The new building also is larger and more energy efficient.
The embassy said Friday that the old building “had aged beyond its ability to be improved to current security and life safety standards without extensive investment in infrastructure that would require appropriated dollars.”
Hours after the president’s tweet, Mr. Trump’s diplomatic appointee to the U.K., businessman and New York Jets owner Robert “Woody” Johnson, took an entirely different approach to the embassy’s relocation and construction. The new embassy “is the most secure, hi-tech and environmentally friendly embassy that the United States has ever built,” Mr. Johnson wrote in the U.K.’s Evening Standard newspaper.