London’s Mayor Rejoices
President Donald Trump has once again cancelled a trip to London, this time offering as a reason President Barack Obama made a bad real estate deal by moving the U.S. embassy in the UK into a bigger building.
In fact, it wasn’t President Obama, but President George W. Bush, who made the deal. And a bad real estate deal, if indeed it even was, is no reason to refuse to visit our nation’s strongest ally.
“The latest cancellation is sure to increase tensions with a vital ally that has broken with Trump recently over his anti-Muslim rhetoric. Some neighborhoods in London declared themselves off-limits to the president,” USA Today reports.
“Trump confirmed his decision on Twitter late Thursday night after British newspapers reported that fears of mass protests had scuttled the trip. A poll from last year found that about 4% of Britain’s population — roughly 2.5 million people — would protest a state visit by Trump.”
The paper notes that the problem with the president’s “explanation is that Trump’s tweet misrepresented the history of the U.S. Embassy move. According to the State Department and the U.S. Embassy itself, it was the administration of President George W. Bush — not Obama — that decided to build a new embassy in 2006 and chose the new location in 2008.”
“And the billion-dollar price tag is typical of an embassy construction of that size. Officials also said that it was financed entirely by the sale of other U.S. property in England — not new taxpayer money. It opens to the public on Jan. 16.”
Meanwhile, the mayor of London immediately responded to the news, with glee:
Photo caption: “This photo was taken in London’s Parliament Square on Monday 20 February 2017 during a protest against the proposed state visit of American president Donald Trump to Britiain.”
Image by Alisdare Hickson via Flickr and a CC license
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