She tied herself to Trump when he had been president for a single week, rushing to Washington to win the race to be his first foreign visitor. She held his hand and offered him the shiniest bauble in the UK prime minister’s gift bag: an invitation for a state visit. While Trump’s predecessors had had to wait years for the offer of a royal red carpet (rather than just a regular working trip), and some never got one at all, May bowed early.
That looked embarrassingly eager at the time, especially when, just a few hours after he had stood with May, Trump turned himself into a global pariah with his travel ban targeting seven mainly Muslim countries. Angela Merkel had made future ties conditional on Trump’s adherence to basic international norms, such as human rights. May, by contrast, was supine in her neediness.
And that mortifying posture has continued. When Germany, France and Italy issued a joint condemnation of Trump’s break from the Paris agreement on climate change, May pointedly refused to sign. The PM promised instead that she would raise the subject when she sat down for formal talks with Trump at last week’s G20 meeting in Hamburg – only to admit afterwards that she had done no such thing. There wasn’t enough time, Downing Street said, even though the Trump-May session overran by 20 minutes. (Officials said the pair discussed the issue informally, after the meeting.)
It was also at the G20 that May once again stood at Trump’s metaphorical side, defending his decision to have his daughter Ivanka take the US seat at the talks, putting this unelected designer of handbags between May and President Xi of China. To most observers that looked like an act of regal presumption, Trump confirming that he sees the US presidency as a throne stamped “Property of the Trump Family”. Not May, though: she thought it “entirely reasonable”.
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