The U.K. ambassador to the U.S. has resigned after leaked cables revealed years of Sir Kim Darroch disparaging the work and character of President Trump. The cables span the entirety of Trump’s presidency and include a multitude of insults from Darroch about the president’s ability to do his job. Below are some excerpts shared by the Daily Mail.
“We don’t really believe this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.” He further said that he did not feel Trump’s White House would “ever look competent.”
Darroch characterized Trump’s life as having been “mired in scandal” and further predicted that the president could “emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like [Arnold] Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator.”
After Trump’s recent visit to the U.K., Darroch cautioned London that they might be “flavour of the month” for the president and “This is still the land of America First.”
In a particularly scathing letter to British National Security Adviser Sir Mark Sedwill, Darroch said that prominent rumors of “vicious infighting and chaos” inside the White House, frequently dismissed by Trump as “fake news” were, in fact, “mostly true.”
Darroch cautioned other British officials and diplomats that in order to be effective “when dealing with Trump you need to make your points simple, even blunt.”
Before the findings of Robert Mueller’s investigation were released earlier this year, Darroch ventured in one memo that Trump’s potential collusion with Russia “The worst cannot be ruled out.”
Of Trump’s foreign policy effectiveness, Darroch said “It’s unlikely that US policy on Iran is going to become more coherent any time soon. This is a divided Administration.”
The ambassador also criticized Trump’s response to the attack of two oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and the shoot-down of a U.S. Navy Drone saying his last-minute choice not to attack because of potential casualties, “‘doesn’t stand up … It’s more likely that he was never fully on board and that he was worried about how this apparent reversal of his 2016 campaign promises would look come 2020.”
Darroch also warned London to expect tension from Trump regarding Brexit saying, “As we advance our agenda of deepening and strengthening trading arrangements, divergences of approach on climate change, media freedoms and the death penalty may come to the fore.”
