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‘Stick around’: Donald Trump tells outgoing British PM Theresa May
Trump made the remarks after May hailed the business side of the relationship between the countries, “It is a great partnership, but I think it’s a partnership that we can take even further. That’s with of course a bilateral free trade agreement”.
US president Donald Trump on Tuesday told Prime Minister Theresa – who is due to leave office on June 7 – to ‘stick around’, so that a trade deal could be signed between the two countries after the UK leaves the European Union on October 31.
The two leaders met during a business roundtable at St James’s Palace in the morning, before meeting in Downing Street in what is likely to be May’s last major international engagement before resigning on June 7 in the wake of the Brexit logjam.
Trump told May at the business meeting, “I think we will have a very, very substantial trade deal. This is something you want to do and my folks want to do…Stick around. Let’s do this deal”.
Trump made the remarks after May hailed the business side of the relationship between the countries, “It is a great partnership, but I think it’s a partnership that we can take even further. That’s with of course a bilateral free trade agreement”.
“I think there are huge opportunities for us to seize together, and challenges for us to work together on to tackle as well. And the opportunity today is that we are going to look at how we do both of those”, she said.
Thousands of people gathered in Trafalgar Square and other places to stage protest, which include a Trump baby blimp and other methods. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is due to address the anti-Trump demonstration later on Tuesday.
Continuing Labour’s opposition to the state visit, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry said: “A state visit is an honour and we don’t think this president deserves an honour. The truth is he has tried to close borders with Muslim-majority countries, he is caging small Mexican children, he has grabbed women and boasted about it”.
“He is a sexual predator, he is a racist and it’s right to say that – we need to think about when is it our country got so scared?” she told BBC.
Opposition to Trump in parliament has prompted speaker John Bercow denying him the opportunity to address MPs, an honour extended to former US President Barack Obama in 2011.
