President Trump in a tweet early Monday called London Mayor Sadiq Khan a “stone cold loser” ahead of the president’s visit to the city.
“.@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly ‘nasty’ to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom,” Trump tweeted.
“He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me,” he added.
Trump followed up with a second tweet likening Khan to another one of his American rivals — New York City mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Bill de Blasio. Both are “very dumb and incompetent,” he said.
He made a similar dig at Khan while speaking to reporters outside the White House Sunday before leaving for his Europe trip, saying he thinks Khan is de Blasio’s “twin … except shorter.”{mosads}
Khan wrote a fiery op-ed on Saturday that the United Kingdom is on the “wrong side of history” ahead of Trump’s visit.
“In years to come, I suspect this state visit will be one we look back on with profound regret and acknowledge that we were on the wrong side of history,” Khan said in The Guardian.
Trump’s visit to England comes as the nation is divided in still undecided Brexit negotiations and searching for a prime minister. Trump has publicly supported the controversial conservative choice Boris Johnson, saying he would be “excellent.”
Trump on Sunday also pushed back on reports that he called Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, “nasty.”
“I never called Meghan Markle ‘nasty,’ ” he said.
“Made up by the Fake News Media, and they got caught cold!” he added. “Will @CNN, @nytimes and others apologize? Doubt it!”
The president said in an interview published last week that he was not aware that Markle had called him “divisive” and “misogynistic” during his 2016 presidential campaign.
“I didn’t know that. What can I say?” he told The Sun.
“I didn’t know that she was nasty,” he added.