The British media tries to figure out the American president.<\/b>
\nLONDON\u2014\u201cIt was like watching a news conference by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,\u201d John Rentoul, the chief political commentator for The Independent, told the BBC, standing on the broadcaster\u2019s balcony while anti-Trump demonstrators streamed by below. He was talking about President Donald Trump\u2019s press conference on Friday afternoon with Prime Minister Theresa May, in which Trump at turns read talking points about the importance of the trans-Atlantic alliance, veered off script into strange tangents, and insulted members of the press.
Trump has brought his unique nonscheduled style to Britain, and the British press doesn\u2019t seem quite sure what to make of it. Britain is the country where journalists routinely spar with politicians; where the state broadcaster, the BBC, prides itself on speaking truth to the government; where a tabloid press may have helped bring about Brexit; and where in Prime Minister\u2019s Question Time MPs hurl insults in ritualized verbal violence so sharp that other world leaders might not come out alive. But what of Trump? How to handle his sometimes exaggerated, sometimes self-contradictory, sometimes meandering, sometimes flatly false remarks? Or, as one sign at a protest rally in London on Friday read, \u201cWhere Do I Start?\u201d
In Friday\u2019s news conference, Trump lashed out at CNN, which he called \u201cfake news,\u201d and NBC, which he called \u201cdishonest reporting,\u201d and gave a lot of question time to Fox News. For some members of the British press, this was apparently something new to behold. Afterwards, one BBC commentator said he was \u201cstruck by the way any hostile question is dismissed as \u2018dishonest reporting\u2019 or \u2018fake news.\u2019\u201d He kept recounting the story of \u201cthe poor bloke from CNN,\u201d whom Trump passed over in the press conference. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the way he operates.\u201d
One of the most dramatic moments was when Trump called an on-the-record bombshell interview he had given to The Sun \u201cfake news\u201d\u2014even though The Sun, a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, had quoted the president verbatim and even posted audio from the interview, in which Trump had lambasted May over her handling of Brexit. With the banner headline \u201cMay Has Wrecked Brexit\u2026 US Deal Is Off!\u201d, the interview landed Thursday evening, just as Trump was sitting down to a gala dinner hosted by May at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
In the interview, Trump criticized May\u2019s interest in a \u201csoft Brexit,\u201d a line taken by Boris Johnson, who quit as foreign secretary earlier this week to protest that very point. (The line is also taken by Nigel Farage, a leading Brexiteer and now Fox News commentator, who told the BBC he\u2019d been discussing Brexit with members of Trump\u2019s circle; Politico reported he\u2019s angling for a meeting with Trump.) More importantly, Trump also told The Sun that a soft Brexit would scuttle any possible bilateral trade deals with the United States.
At the press conference, Trump tried to walk things back\u2014sort of. He said the U. S. would continue to trade with Britain. Then he poured effusive praise on May. And said he\u2019d apologized to her.
Wait, what?
\u201cI thought it was a surprising presser,\u201d Katy Balls, the political correspondent for The Spectator, said. \u201cIt was strange to watch really, that basically we\u2019ve gotten to such a drastic point\u2014what seemed to be the president saying he doesn\u2019t support Theresa May on Brexit, then his saccharine support of her. I don\u2019t think it was particularly coherent.\u201d
How to frame quotes by someone who bends reality and calls his own statements fake news? Does the president understand what he\u2019s doing?
Before the press conference, Tom Newton Dunn, the politics editor of The Sun who conducted the interview with Trump, said he wasn\u2019t sure Trump understood how damaging his remarks on Brexit could be to May, even though the president was clearly criticizing her. \u201cIf Theresa May gets Brexit wrong here then she\u2019s out of a job,\u201d Dunn told CNN . \u201cIf you start talking into that sort of territory, I really think anyone who\u2019s done Politics 101 knows that\u2019s going to cause trouble.\u201d
Still he added, maybe Trump didn\u2019t think it through. \u201cI don\u2019t really think the president wanted to come here and bring Theresa May a wrapped hand grenade. I think he was being honest,\u201d Dunn said. \u201cHe talks straight, most of the time. Perhaps not to CNN.\u201d He said they\u2019d done the interview in Brussels on Wednesday morning but held it a day, timing its publication for maximum impact.
\u201cWe\u2019re a bit obsessed with manners on this side of the pond as you know,\u201d Dunn added. \u201cIt seems a tad discourteous to drop that wrapped hand grenade to your host when your host has gone out of the way to put on such a show for you.\u201d In another interview with the BBC, Dunn had compared Trump to \u201ca medieval emperor.\u201d \u201cI was struck in the room that whatever the president says, goes,\u201d Dunn told CNN. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t contradicted. It was not scripted, it was all coming from the heart.\u201d
After the press conference, The Sun issued a statement that could be a case study in a semiotics textbook: \u201cWe stand by our reporting and the quotes we used\u2014including those where the President was positive about the Prime Minister, in both the paper and in our audio\u2014and we\u2019re delighted that the President essentially retracted his original charge against the paper later in the press conference,“ BuzzFeed quoted a Sun spokesperson saying. „To say the President used \u2018fake news\u2019 with any serious intent is, well\u2026 \u2018fake news.\u2019“<\/p>\n

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Similarity rank: 10<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.5<\/div>\n

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