British lawmakers slammed President Trump after the latter gave an interview with a British newspaper criticizing Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan for Brexit and accusing London Mayor Sadiq Khan of not standing up to terrorists.
Politicians on both side of the British political spectrum condemned Trump’s remarks following the interview with The Sun, with some leveling charges of racism against the U.S. president.
“Trump is a racist & disrespects our nation. Why does he get to meet our Queen? And those Tories saying we should respect him simply because he is elected President – by that logic shouldn’t he respect our Prime Minister & London’s Mayor?” tweeted Anna Turley, a Labour Party member of Parliament.
{mosads}Trump is scheduled to meet with Queen Elizabeth II on Friday.
Conservative Parliament member Sarah Wollaston told The Guardian the “dog-whistle rhetoric” in the interview was “repulsive.”
“The divisive, dog-whistle rhetoric in his Sun interview is repulsive. If signing up to the Trump world view is the price of a deal, it’s not worth paying,” she said, adding that Trump was “determined to insult” the prime minister.
“Our prime minister is so weak she still rolls out the red carpet for a man who does nothing but insult her. Humiliating,” said Ben Bradshaw, a Labour Party member of Parliament for Exeter.
Another Labour Party Parliament member, Rupa Huq, told The Guardian that Trump’s comments about Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, constituted Islamophobia.
“A dash of Islamophobia lobbed at Sadiq Khan who he blames for terrorism. Awful stuff,” she said.
Trump shocked British media and many in the U.S. when he openly attacked May’s plan for Brexit during his Thursday interview with The Sun, before going further to lament that “millions” of immigrants were forever altering Europe’s cultural makeup.
“I would have done it much differently,” Trump said of May’s Brexit plan. “I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me.”
“I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you are losing your culture,” he added.
He specifically named London as a city with too many immigrants.
He said Khan has “done a very bad job on terrorism.”
The White House clarified Trump’s remarks in a statement following the interview, noting that Trump referred to May as a “very good person” during the interview.
“As he said in his interview with The Sun she ‘is a very good person’ and he ‘never said anything bad about her,’ ” Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “He thought she was great on NATO today and is a really terrific person.”