There were more uncomfortable exchanges in the White House on Thursday, as visiting UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer had to correct both President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in what the US media was calling another “Macron moment.”
The scene was reminiscent of French President Emanuel Macron’s visit to the White House on Monday, when the French leader felt the need to grab Trump by the forearm mid-response and interject that Europe was not, in fact, going to be repaid for most of its aid sent to Ukraine over the course of Russia’s three-year invasion.
JOIN US ON TELEGRAM
Follow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official.
On Thursday, Trump repeated his mistaken claims and once again used fabricated figures of aid sent by his predecessor.
“In Europe, they get their money back by giving money. We don’t get the money back. Biden made a deal over $ 351 billion, and I thought it was a very unfair situation,” he said at the joint press conference in the same East Room venue.
Starmer interrupted the president, saying, “We’re not getting ours... Quite a bit of ours was gifted, was given... There were some loans, but it was mostly gifted, actually.”
The Republican president, who was elected on an “America First” platform, has long complained, correctly, that European allies in NATO have allocated much less to their defense budgets than America has, and has contended, incorrectly, that the US has contributed more money to Ukraine’s defense effort than has Europe.
What’s Behind the US-Ukrainian Minerals Deal?
Turning to his European guest, Trump said, “You have done very well over the years, haven’t you?”
Starmer replied, “We have, I’m very proud of our country, but we’ve also always been there backing each other up... That is why this is the greatest alliance for prosperity and security, I think, the world has ever seen. Whenever necessary, we’ve absolutely backed each other up.”
Trump then asked, “Could you take on Russia by yourselves?”
The British leader politely smiled and said only, “Well...”
We’ve had free speech for a very long time.
He wasn’t finished correcting the US administration, however.
Trump has often been joined by some of his Cabinet members at these joint press conferences, notably Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his vice president.
At one point, Vance was asked to chime in from his seat in the room about his recent remarks to the press about free speech. He remarked, “We do have, of course, a special relationship with our friends in the UK and also our European allies, but we also know there have been infringements on free speech that affect not just the British.
(Inconveniently for Vance, his comments came the same week that the White House announced measures that would allow them to exclude from press conferences media outlets that did not cover the administration favorably or that fact-check its statements.)
“Of course, what the British do in their own country is up to them, but it also affects American technology companies [in an apparent reference to American social media platforms, such as X, owned by presidential adviser Elon Musk] and, by extension, American citizens. So that’s something we will talk about at lunch.”
Starmer was having none of it and replied sharply, “We’ve had free speech for a very long time, it will last a long time, and we are very proud of that... In relation to free speech in the UK, I’m very proud of our history there.”
You can also highlight the text and press Ctrl + Enter
