(Bloomberg) — U.S. President Donald Trump used “completely unacceptable” language to describe four female Democratic lawmakers, Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman told reporters in London on Monday, potentially exacerbating the recent tensions with Washington.
Trump posted a series of tweets on Sunday suggesting that four U.S. lawmakers, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, should return to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
May thinks “the language used to refer to these women was completely unacceptable,” her spokesman, James Slack, told reporters on Monday.
May’s office publicized her criticism of Trump as she entered her final few days as the U.K.’s prime minister. She’s had a fraught relationship with the U.S. president, who last week criticized her handling of Brexit.
The transatlantic alliance is already under strain after a controversy over leaked comments from Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., Kim Darroch, in which he criticized the Trump administration. The president froze Darroch out of meetings in Washington, and the envoy resigned last week.
May’s comments are likely to put pressure on the two rivals to succeed her, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, to join her in denouncing the president’s language when they take part in a live debate on Tuesday evening. Johnson has been widely criticized over his perceived failure to stand by Darroch, though the front-runner in the Tory leadership contest denied he was unsupportive and said the incident had become politicized.
(Updates with Tory leadership debate in final paragraph.)
To contact the reporters on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at [email protected];Alex Morales in London at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Stuart Biggs, Tony Halpin
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