Greeting Sir Keir Starmer inside the White House, US President Donald Trump said: “It’s a great honour to have Prime Minister Starmer at the Oval Office” in a gushing show of appreciation
Donald Trump greets Keir Starmer as he arrives at the White House
Donald Trump has heaped warm praise upon the Prime Minister as he visited the White House for a crunch summit on Ukraine and bilateral relations.
Greeting Sir Keir Starmer inside the White House, US President Donald Trump said: “It’s a great honour to have Prime Minister Starmer at the Oval Office. It’s a very special place and he’s a special man – and the United Kingdom is a wonderful country that I know very well, I’m there a lot.
“I’ll be going there and we expect to see each other in the near future – we’ll be announcing it. We’re going to be discussing many things today, we’re going to be discussing Russia/Ukraine, we’ll be discussing trade and lots of other items, and I think we can say we are going to be getting along on every one of them.
“We’ve had a tremendous relationship and, frankly, the Prime Minister and I have met twice before, and we get along very famously, as you would say, and I look forward to it very much. We look forward to the day and the meeting, and we’ll be having a luncheon after this, and then another work session, and I believe we’re going to have a press conference at the end – so I look forward to it and, Mr Prime Minister, thank you very much.”
Donald Trump indicated he could back Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal. “We’re going to have some discussions about that very soon, and I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well,” Mr Trump said. I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country,” he continued.
He then went on to say the planned deal with Volodymyr Zelensky on minerals would effectively be a security “backstop”. The US President said: “President Zelensky is coming to see me on Friday morning. And we’re going be signing really a very important agreement for both sides because it’s really going to get us into that country, working there.” He added it was” a backstop, you could say”.
It come after the two men were pictured exchanging smiles and shaking hands at the entrance to the West Wing. Reporters asked the president if he can get a peace deal done in Ukraine, to which he answered “yes, we can” before swiftly heading inside. The Prime Minister has now arrived in the US for crunch talks in the Oval Office, with Ukraine top of the agenda. Starmer will warn the President that unless the US provides a security guarantee for any peace deal, despot Vladimir Putin will strike again.
Ahead of the talks, Mr Starmer insisted Mr Trump was on side against Putin – despite his attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, who he has accused of starting the war and branded a “dictator”. In a make-or-break week, President Zelensky is expected to visit the White House on Friday to discuss a deal to give the US access to Ukraine’s valuable minerals.
Mr Starmer will have to think on his feet around the US President who has an earned reputation for unpredictability. The Republican was blasted yesterday after sharing an AI-generated video of a glitzy Gaza Strip, transformed to include casinos and Trump hotels complete with a massive golden statue of himself.
It is the first time the two leaders have met since Trump’s second inauguration and many have billed the meeting as a test to Starmer’s diplomacy.
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