PIERS MORGAN BRITAIN DUMPED BY TRUMP FOR EMMANUEL MACRON

PIERS MORGAN BRITAIN DUMPED BY TRUMP FOR EMMANUEL MACRON



Zut Alors!

Well that’s it, then.

The Special Relationship….. c’est fini.

President Trump’s decision to accept French President Macron’s invitation to celebrate Bastille Day in Paris next month has killed off any last vestige of hope I had that Britain and America would continue to enjoy any kind of special anything together.

And my country’s only got its petty, petulant little self to blame.

I feared this moment would come.

Ever since Trump won the White House, my fellow Brits have turned against him with quite extraordinary venom.

Frankly, it’s been pathetic to watch.



You don’t have to like Trump or agree with his political views, to respect the office that he holds.

The President of the United States is the most powerful person on the planet.

As such, he has the ability to make British lives considerably easier, or considerably harder, from matters of defence to the economy.

For many decades, Britain has enjoyed a uniquely close rapport with our friends across the Atlantic.

We’ve stood shoulder-to-shoulder through war and peace, scratching each others’ backs when the need has come.

Now we’ve thrown that all away in a lengthy fit of breathtakingly dumb and self-punishing pique and propelled the US President into the cunning welcoming arms of Emmanuel Macron; a man who seems to understand that showing respect to America and its leader is a sensible, not stupid thing.

I don’t blame Trump in the slightest for any of this.

He couldn’t have done more, during his election campaign and since his shock victory, to signal that he loves Britain.

His mother was British, born and bred in Scotland until she was 18.

‘I’m half British!’ he proudly told me.

And he’s right, he is.

Cut Donald Trump in two, as many of his more extreme critics would like to do, and he’d bleed a lot of tartan blood.

His mother adored the Royal Family.

‘She loved watching the Queen on television,’ Trump told me.

So he was absolutely thrilled when British Prime Minister Theresa May invited him for a full State visit to the UK later this year.



He had instant visions of gliding down the Mall with the Queen in her gold carriage, and playing golf at Windsor Castle.

He will have imagined how incredibly proud Mary Anne Trump would have been, if she were alive, to see that.

Yet from the moment the invitation was made public, a massive campaign’s been waged to stop Trump’s state visit ever happening.

There have been mass protests in the streets of London, furious anti-Trump pronouncements from idiotic self-serving politicians and left-wing celebrities, and online petitions signed by millions demanding he be banned.

It grew so vicious there was even one video clip that went viral of a large rally in Brighton, on the UK’s south coast, where thousands of people simply chanted ‘Donald Trump, you’re a c**t!’ at the top of their voices.

What made all this so ludicrously hypocritical was that there were no such campaigns to ban far worse world leaders from getting similar state visits.



This century alone, Britain has been happy to provide them for ruthless Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad, Russian bully Vladimir Putin, President Xi Jinping of China, a nation with a shocking record of human rights abuses, and for King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a country rampant with medieval beheadings, stonings, religious and political persecution, that treats women with grotesque intolerance and where it’s illegal to be gay.

Even President George W. Bush got one and he waged what many consider to be an illegal, unethical war in Iraq that led to the surge in support for ISIS.

But Trump was somehow deemed worse than any of these men and singled out for special hateful attention that I know for a fact has shocked and hurt him.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, given how he denounced Barack Obama’s foolish comment that Britain would be ‘back of the queue’ for any trade deal with the US if we left the European Union, and insisted that would not be the case under his presidency.

Trump’s reward for this fulsome support was to be mocked, scorned and abused by the British people.

No wonder his head’s now been turned by Macron.

Donald Trump, from my experience, appreciates two things above all else in people that he meets: strength of character and respect.

He’s actually quite a straightforward guy once you get to know him.

Treat him fairly, and he will treat you fairly back.

Punch him in the face, metaphorically or otherwise, and he’ll punch you back.

Stand your ground and he will appreciate that.

Embarrass or humiliate him and he will detest you.

He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but he’s not a monster either – so treating him like one is neither appropriate nor in any supposedly close ally’s interests.

Macroet Trump during NATO last month, he gripped Trump’s hand like a vice and refused to let go.

The deliberately planned optics were clear: there’s a new young kid on the French presidential block and he isn’t going to take any