David Lammy was always a somewhat implausible choice as foreign secretary. His historical reputation for mouthing off on social media on a range of topics – not least Donald Trump’s fitness for office – seemed a blatant hostage to fortune. His ill-judged tweeting has come back to haunt him this weekend.
A 2019 tweet from Lammy is what’s caused new embarrassment. Trump said there had been no president who had been ‘treated so badly’ as he had. In response, Lammy said: ‘4 US Presidents have been assassinated snowflake.’ That’s not the kind of language to be expected of someone who will end up as foreign secretary.
In 2018, Lammy called then-President Trump a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ in an opinion piece for Time magazine. The article was published ahead of Trump’s first visit to the UK, and Lammy publicly committed to be one of ‘tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee’.
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