US president tells ITV he did not know of Britain First and only wanted to oppose Islamic terror

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Donald Trump has said he is prepared to apologise for retweeting inflammatory videos by the far-right group Britain First, as he seeks to prepare the ground for a visit to the UK this year.

In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the US president said he had known nothing about Britain First when he shared the posts by the group’s deputy leader, Jayda Fransen, late last year, prompting a rebuke from Theresa May.

“If you are telling me they’re horrible people – horrible, racist people – I would certainly apologise if you’d like me to do that,” he told the presenter, Piers Morgan.



Q&A Who are Britain First? Show Hide Britain First is an Islamophobic group​ run by convicted racists.​ It was founded in 2011 by former members of the far-right British National Party (BNP) and loyalist extremists in Northern Ireland. It organises mosque invasions where followers, often dressed in paramilitary uniforms, raid multicultural areas in the UK. The group has an influential presence on Facebook and actively uses social media to publicise anti-Islamic material.



Its leader, Paul Golding, a former BNP councillor, and his deputy Jayda Fransen have been arrested several times.​ Fransen was found guilty in November 2016 of religiously aggravated harassment after she hurled abuse at a Muslim woman wearing a hijab.​ A month later Golding was ​jailed for eight weeks for breaching a court order banning him from entering a mosque. Rightwing terrorist Thomas Mair shouted “Britain first” before killing the MP Jo Cox during the EU referendum campaign in 2016.

Trump said he retweeted the posts because of his opposition to Islamist terrorism. The tweets featured videos including one supposedly showing a Muslim immigrant hitting a Dutch boy on crutches. Dutch authorities later said the perpetrator was born and raised in the Netherlands.

Of Britain First, which has an estimated 1,000 followers, Trump said: “I know nothing about them, and I know nothing about them today, other than I read a little bit.”

“Perhaps it was a big story in Britain, perhaps it was a big story in the UK, but in the United States it wasn’t a big story.

“They had a couple of depictions of radical Islamic terror. It was done because I am a big believer in fighting radical Islamic terror. This was a depiction of radical Islamic terror.”

Trump’s offer of an apology came after Downing Street said plans were being made for him to visit the UK in the second half of this year, a trip previously postponed because of the threat of mass protests.

May invited Trump for a full state visit when she went to Washington shortly after his inauguration last year, but no date has been set amid reports Trump is wary of receiving a hostile reception.

Play Video 1:27 Retweeting from Britain First was the wrong thing to do, says May – video

Last month he also called off a trip to open the new US embassy in London, again reportedly because of concern about protests.

The newly planned visit, which was agreed by Trump and May at the end of talks on Thursday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is expected to be a working visit, though there are reports he could meet the Queen.

Morgan interviewed Trump at the Swiss resort, where the US president is gave a speech on Friday.



The full interview will air on Sunday at 10pm on ITV. Clips were shown on Friday’s edition of Good Morning Britain. In the interview Trump said he was a tremendous supporter of the UK and that May was doing a “very good job”.

During the meeting with May in Davos, Trump promised the US would always “be there” for Britain, assured the PM “we love your country”, and said the two leaders “like each other a lot”.

Trump, having put May at the top of the list for his bilateral talks in Davos, rejected the idea that Washington-London relations had soured.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump said his talks with May at the World Economic Forum had been great. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Sitting next to the prime minister, Trump said reports of tension were “a false rumour”. He added: “We’re on the same wavelength in, I think, every respect,” he said. It is understood May did not raise the issue of Trump’s Britain First retweets. After the meeting, Trump tweeted that the talks had been “great”.

Detailed planning that must now get under way for Trump’s visit will include calculating the scale of the security operation. There has been speculation that his arrival will trigger the biggest protests since the anti-Iraq war demonstration in 2003.

Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror and News of the World, got to know Trump in 2008 when he won Celebrity Apprentice in the US, which was hosted by the billionaire. Morgan’s Twitter account is one of just 45 the president follows.

Morgan interviewed Trump for Good Morning Britain in May 2016 during the US election campaign and has previously said he has interviewed him more than 30 times through his various on-screen roles. In the 2016 interview Trump accused Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, of being rude and ignorant. The pair have clashed online over terrorism in the capital.

