President Donald Trump on Sunday blasted Britain’s ambassador to Washington, saying he was not a “big fan” after reports of leaked memos in which the diplomat called Trump and his administration “dysfunctional” and “inept.”
“The ambassador has not served the U.K. well, I can tell you that,” Trump told reporters in New Jersey.
“We’re not big fans of that man and he has not served the U.K. well.”
According to the Daily Mail, Ambassador Kim Darroch had many negative things to say about Trump and his aides in a series of secret diplomatic cables that cover 2017 to the present.
“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,” Darroch wrote at one point, according to the British news outlet.
The Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported that Trump aides have called for Darroch to be fired since the leak.
A spokesperson for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office didn’t specifically discuss the secret cables or name Darroch, a veteran diplomat serving in his current post since 2016, but effectively defended the comments reported by the Mail.
“The British public would expect our ambassadors to provide ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Their views are not necessarily the views of ministers or indeed the government. But we pay them to be candid. Just as the U.S. Ambassador here will send back his reading of Westminster politics and personalities.”
The Foreign Office later said it would launch a formal investigation into the leak.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
