Hell to pay if Trump not invited to royal wedding
MENTAL ISSUES? NO, I’M A GENIUS, INSISTS FURIOUS PRESIDENT
THERESA May’s hopes of a Brexit trade deal with the US could be wrecked if Donald Trump is not invited to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding, the author of a blockbuster book on the president has warned.
Mr Trump will only honour the special relationship if he ‘gets what he wants’ – and would resent a royal wedding snub, according to US journalist Michael Wolff.
He also claimed that the president would abuse his planned state visit to Britain by ‘Trumpalising’ Queen Elizabeth, hogging the limelight and treating her as though she is on one of his reality TV shows.
The comments were made by Mr Wolff following Mr Trump’s furious reaction to the publication of Fire And Fury: Inside The Trump White House.
Mr Wolff has made fresh astonishing claims about the president’s mental state, saying some officials believed the 71-year-old had learning disabilities or even dementia.
Others thought he could have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, a mental disorder often associated with children.
Mr Wolff revealed how Mr Trump is so ignorant about the UK and Europe that he ‘had no idea what Brexit was’ as late as two weeks before the referendum in 2016.
And he stood by his account of Tony Blair’s secret visit to the White House, dismissing Mr Blair’s denial that he told Mr Trump that MI6 may have spied on him.
Mr Wolff said the allegation came from Mr Trump himself, claiming the former British prime minister had been trying to ‘curry favour’ with the new president.
Award-winning political writer Mr Wolff, 64, said he had been ‘astounded’ by the global impact of his book, which was based on months inside the White House West Wing and interviews with more than 200 people, including Mr Trump and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
The White House has described the book as ‘complete fantasy’. After a failed last-ditch legal bid to ban its publication, Mr Trump yesterday maintained his Twitter war of words with Mr Wolff, branding him a ‘total loser’.
But a defiant Mr Wolff warned that Mrs May’s controversial offer of a state visit to Britain, made weeks after Mr Trump was elected, could backfire.
It was seen as a bid to woo him into giving Britain a lucrative post Brexit Anglo-US trade deal.
But Mr Wolff claimed Mr Trump sees it purely as an opportunity to show off and outshine the Queen: ‘He sees the Queen in reality TV show terms. That’s the Trump modus operandi. He will try to Trumpalise the Queen and Buckingham Palace.’
There could be more trouble if he is not on the royal wedding guest list in May.
‘He doesn’t like being snubbed and wants to be the centre of attention all the time,’ Mr Wolff told the Mail on Sunday. ‘Trump’s foreign policy doctrine is simple: you Brits suck up to him and enlist in whatever geopolitical fantasy he has going, he’ll give you what you want – though only if it doesn’t hurt him. It is not so much vengeance, rather “you flatter me… I’ll flatter you.”’
However, it is thought to be unlikely that Mr Trump will be invited to the wedding, not least because Harry recently conducted a fawning interview with Barack Obama. Ms Markle is also a big fan of Trump’s defeated rival Hillary Clinton. Mr Wolff revealed how the US president had little regard for the much-vaunted special relationship between the two nations: ‘If the Brits give him what he wants, he will value the Brits,’ he said.
‘I interviewed Trump two weeks before the 2016 referendum and he had no idea what Brexit was.’
In his book – already a bestseller in the US and UK, and due to touch down here this week – Mr Wolff paints a cold picture of Mr Trump’s marriage, describing how he and his wife Melania have separate bedrooms at the White House, ‘the arrangement of a man who has spent his life chasing women’.
And he claims the self-obsessed president craves love but cannot return it.
‘He needs love and doesn’t understand when he doesn’t get it,’ he writes. ‘He doesn’t love. Other than enormous flattery, he doesn’t care [about] or bond with other people. He demands loyalty but doesn’t return it.’
However, Mr Wolff offers a crumb of comfort to those who may see the claims as further evidence that Mr Trump could set off a third world war in a moment of madness. In fact, the president’s selfishness makes it less likely. ‘He always asks, “What’s in it for me?”
‘He wouldn’t get anything from pressing the button.’
‘You flatter me, I’ll flatter you’ approach