Tweets unworthy of a president

Theresa May is right in sticking to her guns over Donald Trump’s foolish retweeting of racist videos from the hate group Britain First. He was, as she insists, “wrong” to do so. He was also wrong to allow his school playground instincts to again get the better of him and to hit back at Mrs May — the leader not of a hostile, adversarial nation but of an indispensable US ally with which Washington enjoys a longstanding “special relationship” deeply valued by successive White House incumbents.

After an initial, botched tweet that was embarrassingly misdirected to a
41-year-old mother with the same name as Mrs May who lives in Bognor Regis on England’s southern coast and who has six followers, the leader of the free world told Mrs May: “Don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the UK. We are doing just fine!”

Serious issues are in play. Britain First is a nasty anti-Muslim group similar to the Ku Klux Klan in the US. It deserves neither the imprimatur of the most powerful man in the world, nor the oxygen boost his retweeting of its videos to his 44 million Twitter followers brought.

After Mrs May’s initial complaint, the sensible course for Mr Trump would have been to admit an error or stay silent. He is hardly in a position to give Mrs May advice. Last month, Uzbek Muslim terrorist Sayfullo Saipov drove a truck down a New York sidewalk, murdering eight people. Britain has had similar incidents. It needs help, not for groups stirring up racist antipathy to be given credibility by the US President.

In mocking Mrs May, Mr Trump needs to be careful. The Conservative leader currently confronts immense political difficulties over Brexit. If far left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who loathes the “special relationship” with Washington, were to win office, he would do all he could to destroy an alliance that is vital to Western security.

The spat with Mrs May again underlines the way Mr Trump’s ill-considered, shoot-from-the-hip tweets are damaging his presidency. He should learn from it and rein himself in.