White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders attempted to throw cold water on some of the President’s vitriolic critique of UK Prime Minister Theresa May, clarifying to the White House press pool that Trump thinks May is “really terrific.”
“The President likes and respects Prime Minister May very much,” she said in a statement. “As he said in his interview with the Sun she ‘is a very good person’ and he ‘never said anything bad about her.’ He thought she was great on NATO today and is a really terrific person. He is thankful for the wonderful welcome from the Prime Minister here in the U.K.”
Ahead of his visit to London, President Donald Trump gave an exclusive interview to a British tabloid, The Sun. Among his many scathing remarks about May, Trump criticized her handling of Brexit, bragging that May ignored his advice and suggested that her soft stance would “kill” any future chance of an effective trade deal with the U.S.
“If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal,” he told the Sun. “We are cracking down right now on the European Union because they have not treated the United States fairly on trading.”
In the interview, which published while Trump and May were having dinner together, he also suggested that Boris Johnson, who recently resigned as the UK foreign secretary over May’s plan to maintain close trade ties with the EU, would “make a great Prime Minister.”
Among other insults, he said EU leaders were destroying the culture of Europe by accepting millions of immigrants; blamed the London mayor for crime and terrorism in the city; said he felt “unwelcome” in London over the anti-Trump protests and the baby blimp, while insisting that British people love his policies.
