The Atlantic

The British Remind Trump That He's Still the Leader of the Free World

British leaders have accommodated Trump at every turn, yet gifts from Queen Elizabeth II and Theresa May are subtle reminders of the power of democracy.
Source: Clodagh Kilcoyne / Reuters

LONDON—To President Donald Trump, a political protest isn’t so much an expression of hard-won democratic freedoms as a personal rebuke.

At his campaign rallies ahead of his election, Trump would cheer when protesters were evicted—“I’d like to punch him in the face,” he told the crowd when a demonstrator was thrown out of a rally in Las Vegas in February 2016. The notion that he was running for an office sworn to uphold the constitutional protection of free speech never seemed to sink in.

So a visit to Britain was always going to be a minefield for.

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