Britain furious over tweets; Trump defiant
LONDON » TheBritish backlash to President Donald Trump picked up steam Thursday with fresh calls to cancel a planned state visit and Britain’s prime minister standing by her denunciations of Trump’s retweets of a fringe antiMuslim group.
Prime Minister Theresa May blasted Trump for crossing a line by posting the inflammatory videos on his Twitter page Wednesday — then warning May to essentially mind her own business and focus on Islamist terrorism instead of him.
Officials were careful to note that ties with the United States are stronger than the current flare-up with the White House
“It’s increasingly clear that any official visit from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed,” tweeted London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, the first Muslim to hold the office. Khan has repeatedly called for Britain to withdraw an invitation for Trump to visit — and his stance appeared to gain more backing amid the outrage against the president.
In a sign of the disruptive wake unleashed by Trump, Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd had to remind parliament and the public that Britain’s relationship with America was bigger than one president— and that important trade, security and intelligence sharing are ongoing.
The Trump tweets were widely seen in Britain as the kind of exchange he might have been directed at a hostile power, not America’s closest ally, and certainly not one facing both Islamist terrorist attacks at home and fighting alongside the United States against the Islamic State in Syria and elsewhere.
British officials were shocked at the personal nature of the tweet against May and the suggestion that Trump was boasting — even gloating— that the United States had no terrorist attacks, while Britain had suffered a string of deadly assaults.
“@Theresa_ May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom,” Trump tweeted late Wednesday. We are doing just fine!”
Trump was responding to earlier statements from 10Downing Street that the president was “wrong” to retweet three anti-Muslim videos from the extremist group Britain First, which describes itself as a defender against growing Islamic influence in Britain.