Cancel Orangutan visit after retweets...

London mayor calls for UK to cancel Trump visit after retweets

Sadiq Khan called Donald Trump’s retweets of a far-right group a ‘betrayal’ of the two countries’ relationship.

By GINGER HERVEY

London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on the U.K. government to cancel any official state visit by Donald Trump after the U.S. president retweeted a series of videos posted by the leader of a far-right British political group.

The videos, which sought to portray Muslims as violent and dangerous, were originally posted to Twitter by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of the extreme-right, ultranationalist group Britain First. Fransen was found guilty last year of religiously aggravated harassment of a Muslim woman. In a statement Thursday, Khan accused Trump of promoting a “vile, extremist group that exists solely to sow division and hatred.”

“After this latest incident, it is increasingly clear that any official visit at all from President Trump to Britain would not be welcomed,” Khan said.

The U.K. government had previously issued an invitation to Trump for 2018 which was accepted, but the details and timing had not yet been arranged. After Trump’s retweets, Prime Minister Theresa May condemned his actions but stopped short of rescinding the state visit offer.

Trump later pushed back, telling May on Twitter “don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism.”

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable also demanded on Thursday that May not meet Trump, whom the party called an “evil racist” in a statement.

Khan also said “many Brits who love America” will see Trump’s actions as a “betrayal of the special relationship” between the two countries.

Ann Coulter, the right-wing American commentator who is one of just 45 people Trump follows on Twitter, could have been the source of his seeing the Britain First tweet. She said that she did not know what Britain First was when she retweeted the videos herself, but that she doesn’t “think it really matters, it’s a video.”

“A video is a video is a video,” Coulter said.