Donald Trump says ‘jihad’ has made London ‘unrecognisable’ – who does he think he is?

The former president wouldn’t know a real Londoner if he met one, writes Sean O’Grady. The UK doesn’t have any time for his racist, sexist tantrums

Protesters in London showed their distaste for Trump in 2018 with a blimp made in his likeness (PA)

Donald Trump, the most dangerous as well as the most conceited man on the planet, says that London is “unrecognisable” because Europe has “opened its doors to jihad”, something that would “never” be allowed to happen in the US.

Well, aside from his talent for inciting insurrection and what we might term a kind of Maga jihad on 6 January 2021, one has to ask: “How do you know, Don?” As far as is publicly known, Trump had barely set foot in the UK before he became US president, and may have spent more time on his vulgar ersatz golf course in Scotland than in the nation’s capital.

When he was president, his trips to London were official visits, during which he was greeted by obsequious officials and dutifully polite members of the establishment, led by the Queen. He did not mix with the common folk of our land, nor did he express much interest in doing so. He may even have been blissfully unaware of the giant inflatable blimp, a caricature of a bawling Trump in a nappy, with which the people of London greeted their childish visitor.

So, one wonders what Trump thinks London is “supposed” to be like. Full of pearly kings and flatcapped costermongers? Men in tricorn hats administering workhouses? Cheery Beefeaters? (Well, we still have them, though some are female nowadays.) Chaps in bowler hats with furled umbrellas at the ready? Cockneys in hovels sounding like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins? Street urchins, toothless tramps, and bow-legged peasants with rickets? A city where Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, are able to go about their traditional macabre business with impunity?

Well, we don’t bloomin’ care what that tangerine Yank with his mental barnet thinks about the Smoke – and besides, we know what he really means, what with the reference to “jihad”. He means London didn’t use to be multicultural (which is only partly true in any case), and that there are too many brown-skinned people who happen to be Muslims for his liking. He seems especially not to like the elected mayor, Sadiq Khan – and you can guess what that’s all about.

Well, he’s entitled to his view, mad as it is – and we’re entitled to ours, which is that we don’t need the likes of him telling us what our country is like when we live here and he doesn’t. In fact, we don’t like his attitude towards us, to the defence of our nation and our continent through Nato, to women, to people of colour, to the LGBT+ community, to free speech,to free and fair elections – and above all, we don’t like his debasement of the presidency of the United States. If he is so concerned about the welfare of the British, where’s our free trade deal? Why won’t he stand up to Putin? Why does he find us so expendable?

Trump has been a festering sore on the arse (not “ass”) of the American body politic for far too long, and his extremism, racism, sexism and arrogance have made American public life unrecognisable. He destroyed the dignity of the presidency. This is a man who thought injecting people with disinfectant could cure Covid. Who has been convicted of sexual assault. Who faces multiple criminal charges. Who grabs women by the genitals – and brags about it. Who ridicules war heroes and people with disabilities. Who does this bloke think he is?

It is indeed Trump who has unleashed jihad on his own party, his country, and the constitution that is supposed to bind them together. This is a man who literally wants to place himself above the law by way of permanent immunity from prosecution, theoretically including the assassination of political opponents or, presumably, troublesome women.

We really don’t need to take any lectures from Trump about peaceful, cohesive, tolerant societies. We’ve got many of them in Britain, not least in London.

As we like to say: Trump can sling his hook.