LONDON: The British ambassador to the US lodged concerns over retweets sent by President Donald Trump with senior White House officials on Thursday, after the US President sparked outrage with a sharp rebuke of British Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter for criticising him over retweeting British far-right anti-Islam videos.
On Wednesday, the British government told Trump he was “wrong” to retweet the series of anti-Muslim video clips promoted by a leader of an ultranationalist fringe group that May’s office said “peddles lies” and “hateful narratives.”
But as British politicians lined up to condemn the US President for sharing the videos, Trump, in an unprecedented attack on one of America’s closest allies, replied: “Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine.”
.@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2017
His response caused widespread anger in Britain, where there have been several major militant attacks this year, with one minister describing Trump’s tweets as “alarming and despairing”.
Trump had alerted his millions of followers to three video posts by Britain First, a small group of far-right nationalists whose supporters march in front of mosques with crosses and whose leaders decry what they describe as a takeover of British Christian society by “foreign infidels”.
The videos provide no context. The Netherlands Embassy tweeted to Trump that the video about the “Muslim migrant” had been mischaracterised: “Facts do matter. The perpetrator of the violent act in this video was born and raised in the Netherlands. He received and completed his sentence under Dutch law.” The embassy did not reveal his religion.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders defended Trump’s post as evidence he wants to “promote strong borders and strong national security.”
“Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real, and that is what the president is talking about,” Sanders said.
Trump retweeted an item from Jayda Fransen, 31, deputy leader of Britain First, who in an interview with The Washington Post expressed gratitude for what she said was Trump’s endorsement of her and her group. “The British establishment no longer supports free speech, but the president of the United States, Donald Trump, clearly does, and that’s why he tweeted, as a public display of support for Britain First and its deputy leader,” she said.
Fransen faces a charge of hate speech for remarks she made about Muslims at a recent rally in Belfast and a charge of “religious harassment” for a social-media campaign she waged against several Muslim men convicted in a rape case.
May’s office condemned Britain First for its use of “hateful narratives which peddle lies and stoke tensions.” The statement continued: “The British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far-right, which is the antithesis of the values that this country represents — decency, tolerance and respect. It is wrong for the President to have done this.”
British leaders across the political spectrum said they were amazed and appalled by Trump’s tweets endorsing a group that usually draws just a few dozen supporters to its rallies. Some said Trump was trying to legitimise the far right in Britain, while others were so flabbergasted that that they wondered whether he was perhaps ignorant.
“Britain First is an appalling organisation,” Martin Callanan, a Conservative Party politician and government minister, told the BBC. Referring to Trump, Callanan said: “I can only assume he has made a mistake and that he didn’t realise who Britain First were.”
When a reporter asked deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah why the president was retweeting posts from a far-right, anti-Muslim party condemned by the British leadership, he said: “We’re going to be focusing on the issues that are being raised, which is safety and security for the American people.” He noted that Trump had supported “extreme vetting” of foreigners travelling to the United States and other measures to crack down on possible entry by terrorists.
Asked about the president’s response to May’s statement, Shah said: “The president has the greatest respect for the British people and for Prime Minister May.”
Always a pillar of Britain’s foreign policy, the so-called “special relationship” with Washington has taken on added importance as Britain prepares to leave the European Union in 2019. Since Trump became president, May has gone out of her way to cultivate a good relationship with him. She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration, and they were filmed emerging from the White House holding hands.
She later said that Trump took her hand in a gentlemanly gesture as they walked down a ramp.
But she angered Trump’s many critics in Britain then by extending an invitation to make a state visit to Britain with all the pomp and pageantry it brings including a formal banquet with Queen Elizabeth.
Despite repeated calls from opposition lawmakers to cancel this, Rudd said the invitation still stood although a timing had not been agreed. She also said the close US-British relationship which allowed the intelligence agencies to share information was vital and had saved lives.
Brendan Cox, the husband of lawmaker Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist and Justin Welby, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, were among those expressing outrage at Trump’s latest tweet.
Lawmakers from the across the political divide were also united in condemnation. Britain’s Middle East minister Alistair Burt tweeted: “The White House tweets are both alarming and despairing tonight. This is so not where the world needs to go.”
Nick Ryan, a spokesman for Hope Not Hate, an anti-extremist research organisation, said it was astonishing that the US president would knowingly retweet the Britain First posts.
“A politician would have to be blind not to understand that this is a particularly nasty far-right organisation that is in trouble with the law, electoral authorities, and reviled by 99 per cent of the population,” Ryan said.
