The Labour Party’s shadow foreign secretary got on board with the anti-Trump crowd ahead of the US president’s visit to the UK, declaring him a ‘threat to our world order.” But some commenters took issue with her choice of words.
“Donald Trump's statement on the Arms Trade Treaty is the final confirmation that he is not the Leader of the Free World, he never has been, and he does not deserve the honour of a State Visit to Britain,” Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry tweeted on Friday. “He is nothing but a disgrace to his office and a threat to our world order.”
Thornberry was responding to Trump’s decision to withdraw from the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty. The treaty would impose checks and limitations on the export of arms to foreign governments, and according to Trump, would threaten Americans’ Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
Also on rt.com Trump’s arms treaty withdrawal divides US pundits, even though it doesn’t change anythingThe Labour MP’s broadside at Trump comes amid growing hostility to the US president’s upcoming state visit to the UK. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has already promised to boycott a banquet laid out for Trump, as has Parliamentary Speaker John Bercow. Street protests have been organized, and will feature the return of the ‘Trump Baby’ blimp, a supposedly ‘giant’ balloon depicting the president as a wailing infant that disappointed onlookers during Trump’s visit last year.
Also on rt.com Corbyn rejects invite to Trump state dinner, slams May for ‘kowtow’ to US governmentThornberry’s comments, quickly backed by some Trump critics, have also angered the MAGA people, who flocked to the comments to vent at the British parliamentarian. “We invented Brexit in 1776 for a reason,” one wrote, while another argued that the “world order” needs a good shaking up.
More commenters jumped in to criticize Thornberry’s Labour colleagues for happily meeting with foreign leaders like Chinese President Xi Jinping and Syrian President Bashar Assad, yet drawing the line at Trump.
She was also criticized for dining with Israeli ambassador Mark Regev, despite her party’s pro-Palestine leanings.
While Trump has not responded to Thornberry’s comment, he didn’t shy away from showing his disregard for the idea of a “world order” when announcing the US quitting from the Arms Trade Treaty on Friday, when he assured that “we will never surrender America’s sovereignty to an unelected, unaccountable, global bureaucracy.”
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