I WILL MAKE BREXIT GREAT VOWS TRUMP
He promises a trade deal within weeks ... and there’s a White House invite for May
DONALD Trump last night delivered a huge boost to Britain by promising a trade deal within weeks to help make Brexit ‘great’.
The president-elect declared his love for the UK and revealed he would be inviting Theresa May to visit him ‘right after’ he gets into the White House.
He said he wants a trade agreement between the two countries secured quickly – making a mockery of President Obama’s threat that the UK would be at the ‘back of the queue’ if the country voted for Brexit.
The comments follow weeks of overtures to the Trump camp by No.10, including a visit by Mrs May’s joint chiefs of staff.
Significantly, he struck a decidedly harsher tone with the EU – predicting more countries will leave and saying it has been hugely damaged by the migration crisis.
Germany and its Chancellor Angela Merkel were lambasted for making a ‘catastrophic mistake’ by allowing more than a million migrants to enter the country.
Mr Trump said: ‘I think it’s very tough. People, countries want their own identity and the UK wanted its own identity.’
In a joint interview with Michael Gove for The Times and the German newspaper Bild, Mr Trump also revealed that Mrs May had written to him just after Christmas.
She sent a gift of a copy of Winston Churchill’s address to the American people, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
In the letter the PM told Mr Trump that she hoped the sentiment of ‘unity and fraternal association’ between the two countries was ‘just as true today as it has ever been’. In controversial com- ments during the interview, the president-elect said he would start off by trusting Mrs Merkel and Vladimir Putin – but warned it might not last long.
He suggested a nuclear weapons reduction deal with Russia in return for lifting US sanctions, vowed an immediate start to the strengthening of America’s borders and threatened ‘extreme vetting’ for those arriving from countries known for terrorism. Mr Trump also described the decision to invade Iraq as ‘possibly the worst... in the history of our country’
During the interview, the president-elect told Vote Leave champion Mr Gove: ‘I love the UK.’
Pointing to a possible meeting with Mrs May in February, he said: ‘We’ll have a meeting right after I get into the White House and ... I think we’re gonna get something done very quickly.’ Mr Trump said he thought ‘Brexit is going to end up being a great thing’.
He welcomed the fall in the value of the pound for helping to boost the attractiveness of British products abroad. Ahead of his inauguration on Friday, he said he was also looking forward to visiting Britain, saying his Scottish mother was ‘proud of the Queen’. The remarks on Brexit will come as a relief to No10, and be seen as a vindication of the strategy pursued by Mrs May. The PM was accused of being ill-prepared for a Trump victory. Further embarrassment followed when former Ukip leader Nigel Farage was invited for an early meeting at Trump Tower.
But Downing Street has since made progress, with Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson last week meeting key Trump advisers.