As public messages of support go, it scored pretty low on the conviction-o-meter.
“Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom acknowledged that he ‘exercised wrong judgment’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social last night. “I agree, he was a really bad pick. Plenty of time to recover, however! President DJT.”
Uh oh. None of the trademark capitalization, which suggests Donald’s heart isn’t really in it. Some aide must have just spoken to him about Keir Starmer’s Peter Mandelson crisis, or perhaps a news story came to his attention.
You know a British prime minister is in trouble when an American president decides to trot out a helpful statement
And you know a British prime minister is in trouble when an American president decides to trot out a helpful statement.
Trump appears to have concluded that now might be a good time to play nice again with the United Kingdom – with half a mind on King Charles III’s state visit to America next week, and following several weeks of transatlantic fractiousness over the Iran war.
But it’s also a delicate subject for President DJT. After all, Mandelson’s fall came about not because of his shady dealings with China or Russia, but thanks to his friendship with the serial sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, who was also of course a friend of Donald J. Trump. Mandelson appears to have been closer than Trump to Epstein – or at least to the post-2008 Epstein who’d already been imprisoned for his predations. But it remains a sensitive subject in the Trump household – just as it is in the House of Windsor. One wonders if the King and Commander-in-Chief will discuss Jeffrey and Andrew, the former prince, behind closed doors here in DC next week.
It’s also interesting that Trump mentions what a bad “pick” Mandelson was. At the time, in the early days of Trump 2.0, various influential figures such as Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon urged Trump to stop the appointment. But these efforts were rebuffed because, apparently, Trump decided to respect Starmer’s decision. He may also have been won over by Mandelson’s faintly emetic flattery on Fox News.
Yet what’s clear is that – before, during and after Mandelson’s posting – the British embassy in Washington has held not inconsiderable sway over Trump. And for all his irritation with Starmer today, he is not willing to stick the knife into a prime minister in peril.
Trump has always said personally he likes Starmer – including his voice, inexplicably – and he also has a soft spot for Keir’s wife Victoria. But when it comes to thinking about foreign leaders, Trump asks himself two simple questions. By how much did he or she win? And how much time has he or she got until the next election? With Starmer, the answer has been “A LOT” – to use the mental caps – and that has been the case throughout Trump’s second term. This is why he said Starmer has “time to recover.”
Perhaps he’s not yet realized quite what a murderous place Westminster can be in the summer months.
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