Trump heads to London amid Brexit furor, political upheaval in Europe
LONDON — President Donald Trump, a disruptive global force with a penchant for diplomatic gaffes and inserting himself into other countries’ politics, leaves Sunday for the United Kingdom and France at a moment of intense political tumult across Europe.
His state visit to Britain will center around a banquet with Queen Elizabeth II and the steadfastly apolitical royal family at Buckingham Palace, a coveted invitation. The fourday trip also includes a twohour visit to Normandy, France, to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, and two nights at the president’s golf resort on the west coast of Ireland.
Britain faces deep uncertainty about the imminent departure of Prime Minister Theresa May, questions about who will replace her and how that person can deliver what she could not: the long anticipated and painful separation from the European Union.
Trump will meet with May on Tuesday, four days before she leaves office as a casualty of the Brexit crisis. But he was not invited to speak to Parliament, as President Barack Obama did in 2011, a snub that reflects Britain’s deep unease with Trump’s abrasive politics. Street protests are expected, and London’s City Hall has given permission for a massive orange-haired baby blimp to fly over Parliament Square.
“Ten years ago, most people would have looked at the United Kingdom and the United States of America as the world’s two strongest, most stable democracies,” said R. Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under President George W. Bush. “Ten years later, they’re both in existential crisis — the U.K. because of Brexit and the U.S. because of Trump.”
The visit comes just after European Union parliamentary elections that saw modest gains by anti-democratic populists fashioned in the Trump mold — a reflection of the widespread unrest, stemming from a slow-growing economy and an immigration crisis that has created upheaval across the Continent.
As president, he has challenged trans-Atlantic relations with some of America’s most important and reliable allies, threatening new tariffs, demanding that NATO allies contribute more to their own defense and even describing the European Union as “a foe” because of its trade practices.
The president’s visit to the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy, where some 9,380 U.S. servicemen killed in the June 1944 D-Day invasion are buried, is also laden with awkward subtext.
Last November, Trump flew to Paris but showed scant interest in ceremonies marking the centennial of the World War I armistice. He skipped a wreath-laying ceremony at an American cemetery and a march down the Champs-Elysees with other world leaders intended to convey solidarity for the international order — an order that Trump, with his America First mantra and sovereignty-focused foreign policy, seemingly has worked to unwind.
The D-Day anniversary “is going to be a day of memorials and reflection, thinking back on what alliances have meant to both Europe and the U.S. for the last 75 years,” said Rachel Rizzo, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank in Washington. “Memorializing that with Donald Trump, who has put more stress on the transAtlantic relationship than any leader in history, is going to be a really interesting optic.”
Last summer, Trump’s visit to the United Kingdom was overshadowed by his sharp criticism of May on the eve of their meeting, when he told a London tabloid that she had disregarded his advice on how to carry out Brexit and that her top political rival, Boris Johnson, would be a solid successor.
Now that May is on the way out, Trump has expressed sympathy for her plight. But he’s left the door open to meeting in London with Johnson or Nigel Farage, two combative pro-Brexit politicians seeking a larger role in the new British government.
Johnson could become the next leader of May’s Conservative Party, while Farage’s recently formed Brexit Party took in 32% of the vote in the May 23-26 EU parliamentary elections.
“They’re friends of mine,” Trump said at the White House last week. “But I haven’t thought about supporting them. Maybe it’s not my business to support people. But I have a lot of respect for both of those men.”
Trump claimed to have predicted the surprising 2016 Brexit vote, which he held up as proof that his own unexpected election was indeed possible. His continued support for Brexit could undermine U.S. efforts to persuade British leaders not to issue licenses to Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which is on a U.S. trade blacklist, according to Daniel Fried, a former U.S. diplomat in Europe who now is at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.