Former British PM says US president should focus on threat from Russia rather than attacking CNN and BBC for fake news

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

David Cameron has accused Donald Trump of undermining democracy by attacking the media, saying the true threat posed by fake news lay with Vladimir Putin, his twitter bots and Russian efforts to use corruption as a weapon of foreign policy.

The former British prime minister also accused Russia of winning the right to stage the 2018 Fifa World Cup via corruption.

Giving his first British public lecture since his resignation in the wake of the Brexit referendum defeat in 2016, Cameron also defended multilateral institutions such as the European Union, warning isolationism driven by anti-globalisation endangered the world’s security.

Giving a lecture in London to Transparency International, he said: “Just as with all our biggest challenges – on trade, on terrorism, on climate change, on global poverty – we need to work with other nations if we want change. We cannot do this alone.”

Quick guide What you need to know about the Trump-Russia inquiry Show Hide How serious are the allegations? The story of Donald Trump and Russia comes down to this: a sitting president or his campaign is suspected of having coordinated with a foreign country to manipulate a US election. The story could not be bigger, and the stakes for Trump – and the country – could not be higher. What are the key questions? Investigators are asking two basic questions: did Trump’s presidential campaign collude at any level with Russian operatives to sway the 2016 US presidential election? And did Trump or others break the law to throw investigators off the trail? What does the country think? While a majority of the American public now believes that Russia tried to disrupt the US election, opinions about Trump campaign involvement tend to split along partisan lines: 73% of Republicans, but only 13% of Democrats, believe Trump did “nothing wrong” in his dealings with Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. What are the implications for Trump? The affair has the potential to eject Trump from office. Experienced legal observers believe that prosecutors are investigating whether Trump committed an obstruction of justice. Both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – the only presidents to face impeachment proceedings in the last century – were accused of obstruction of justice. But Trump’s fate is probably up to the voters. Even if strong evidence of wrongdoing by him or his cohort emerged, a Republican congressional majority would probably block any action to remove him from office. (Such an action would be a historical rarity.) What has happened so far? Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous pleaded guilty to perjury over his contacts with Russians linked to the Kremlin, and the president’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and another aide face charges of money laundering. When will the inquiry come to an end? The investigations have an open timeline.

Cameron warned that Trump’s attacks on news organisations such as CNN and the BBC were not just tactically wrong but dangerous. He accused the US president of “an attempt to question the whole legitimacy of organisations that have an important role in our democracy”.

Cameron said: “Let me put it like this: President Trump, ‘fake news’ is not broadcasters criticising you, it’s Russian bots and trolls targeting your democracy pumping out untrue stories day after day, night after night.

“When you misappropriate the term ‘fake news’, you are deflecting attention from real abuses. Ignoring what’s happening on social media is facilitating a form of corruption that is undermining democracy.”

He then directly challenged the way in which Russia won the right to stage the 2018 World Cup describing the event as a fiasco.

“President Putin actually boycotted the whole thing because he said it was riddled with corruption,” Cameron said. “He was right – it was.”

Adding he was putting it as diplomatically as he could, he said: “I am sure he wasn’t completely surprised when Russia actually won the bid. You couldn’t make it up. In the years since, 10 of the 22 members of that Fifa executive committee were indicted or punished.”

Cameron made the global fight against corruption one of the themes of his premiership, and it was the major issue of his chairmanship of the G8 in 2015. He also staged a corruption summit in 2016 at which world leaders made a series of pledges to clamp down on money laundering and kleptocracy.

In his lecture he defended his record as premier, saying he persuaded British Overseas Territories, often seen as tax havens, to set up central registers of beneficial ownership that were open to law enforcement agencies. In the UK he introduced a public register on beneficial ownership. But legislation promised by Cameron in 2015 on a public register of foreign companies owning property in the UK or seeking public sector contracts has been delayed, with the government promising this week to introduce a draft law in this parliamentary session.

Overall, No 10 has not given the impression of wanting to give global leadership on the issue and Cameron pointedly referred to his corruption summit as the high water mark of UK government action.

He warned that the fight against corruption needed international cooperation and institutions to succeed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked news organisations such as CNN – both during his presidency and during his campaign. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Returning to some of the themes that lost him his premiership, he insisted: “I am not some starry-eyed Davos-devotee who thinks there is nothing wrong with globalisation. Of course we need to help those left behind economically, with better skills, more apprenticeships and higher minimum wages. And we cannot ignore those who feel left behind culturally; whether by immigration that has been too high, or by international organisations – yes, including the European Union – that have been too high handed.”

But he urged: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, including market economics, institutions with rules and openness to the world. These are things that make us strong.

“The things the wave of anti-globalisation is in danger of ushering in – isolationism, protectionism, unilateralism – endanger our countries and our world. And they particularly threaten the fight against corruption.



“The cancer of corruption is developing, metastasising and becoming more commonplace, more complex, more multi-layered, elusive and ingrained,” he said, adding that the best antidote was “transparency, real democracy and accountability”.