Shithole President
Nominal President Donald Trump reached around the empty Fiji water bottles and McDonald’s wrappers to lurch for his phone to send this Tweet:
Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars. Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 12, 2018
Sure, as usual, President Shithole has to blame the black guy.
CNN calls Trump out for his shallow and easily debunked lying.
The decision to move the embassy from Grosvenor Square to Nine Elms was made in 2008 under George W. Bush, not Obama.
Trump literally couldn’t get the most basic detail of his slur – the Presidential Administration that decided the embassy had to move. He also omits the reason – the old embassy in Grosvenor Square was in a dense residential neighborhood and the security needs for American outposts have changed dramatically since 1960.
It would have been impossible to retrofit the aging concrete building with the security measures needed, officials said at the time.
Also? Wandsworth near the Vauxhall Bridge is not some “off location”.
The neighbors didn’t like the security measures.
Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, the embassy has caused controversy locally by installing blast walls in a wide perimeter around the building. Neighbors complained the walls were unsightly, and the walls caused the road in front of the building to be closed to traffic.
Finally, the US didn’t own the Grosvenor Square property in fee simple, but held a lease with the Duke of Westminster.
The Duke reportedly said he would only sell if the US government returned his family’s land, confiscated during the American War of Independence.
The US sold the remainder of its lease to the Qatari government for what is thought to be £500 million, or $681.5 million; not exactly “peanuts”.
Donald Trump is the shithole President who was essentially asked not to come because Londoners would have come out in their thousands to protest His racist, white nationalist Accidency.