There was no massive blow up between US President Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, but there were plenty of borderline unhinged moments – and one particularly weird slap on the back
Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK ended with a lengthy and rambling press conference, where very little actual information was revealed.
There was no massive blow up between the two leaders, but there were plenty of borderline unhinged moments – and one particularly weird slap on the back. The pair spoke for about an hour, one on one, about all manner of subjects, we were told at the top of the presser. But in the end, the press conference was dominated by questions on Ukraine, the Middle East and the thorny issue of free speech – with a brief side order of Jeffrey Epstein for good measure. Team Starmer are understood to be “extremely happy” with how the presser went. A source said the PM “chaired it like a pro”, and was “in control of everything.” Here’s everything that happened at the Trump and Starmer press conference that you need to know.
1. ‘Putin has let me down’
Donald Trump admitted that Vladimir Putin had “let me down” over the stalled peace process in the war with Ukraine. He said he did not regret inviting Putin to talks in Alaska last month. But he stuck by his unorthodox plan of trying to force Putin to drop out of the war by convincing NATO countries to apply sanctions to countries that buy Russian oil. “Very simply, if the price of oil comes down, Putin is going to drop out,” he said. “He’s going to have no choice, he’s going to drop out of that war.”
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Keir Starmer added: “There are a number of European countries which are too reliant on energy from Russia, the UK actually, obviously, has almost got nothing at all, but we do need to bear down and work with our European counterparts here. “There are one or two countries, I think, that do need to look again at the question of energy. There’s no one silver bullet here, we do have to have a wider suite of sanctions, which we’ve put in place a number of times, working across Europe and with the United States.”
Trump said he thought the war in Ukraine would be the easiest conflict in the world to resolve “because of my relationship with President Putin. But he’s let me down. He’s really let me down.”
2. Aberbaijan
Boasting about all the conflicts he’s helped “resolve” around the world, largely, it appears, by threatening small countries with economy-breaking tariffs if they keep fighting – Trump referred once again to his success in resolving the conflict between “Aberbeijan and Albania.” Of course, he meant to say Azerbaijan and Armenia. Of course he did.
3. Israeli Hostages must be released ‘right now’
Trump demanded Hamas release all the remaining hostages “right now” – and not in a piecemeal fashion. He accused the militant group of “putting the hostages up as bait” which he described as “pretty brutal”.
And in a slightly awkward moment, following a question from ITV’s Robert Peston, Trump pointedly asked: “Do you understand about October 7th?” (Peston said that..yes, he did.)
4. A point of disagreement – and a weird slap on the back
Trump acknowledged there was one point of difference between the two leaders – on whether to recognise Palestinian statehood. “I have a disagreement with the Prime Minister on that score, one of our few disagreements actually,” Trump said.
Later, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, challenged Starmer over whether statehood would be a boon for Hamas. Starmer was so forthright in his response, he earned a little slap on the back from Trump, in a deeply unusual moment.
5. Trump suggests he’s in talks to get Afghan base back from the Taliban
In a genuine bit of news, Trump indicated he’s in talks to take back a military base in Afghanistan from the Taliban. Describing Bagram air base as “one of the biggest air bases in the world” and suggesting it is “an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons”, Trump said he is “trying to get it back.”
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“Okay, that could be a little breaking news,” Trump said during a joint news conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a state visit to Britain. “We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us. We want that base back.”
6. Trump suggests Starmer should ‘call in the military’ to stop the boats
Trump said Starmer should call out the military to deal with the small boats crisis. Trump rambled that the situations around illegal migration in the UK and US were “very similar”, saying: “I told the Prime Minister I would stop it. It doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter what the region is.
“It destroys countries from within. And we’re actually now removing a lot of the people that came into our country.”
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Mr Starmer instead said the Government would be focusing on partnerships with neighbours. The Tories investigated the idea of using the Navy to turn back small boats. Turns out there are international treaties preventing that sort of thing, and it would be considered an invasion of France.
7. Jimmy Kimmel came up, and was deftly swerved
Starmer was asked whether free speech was more under threat in the US or Britain after Jimmy Kimmel’s US chat show was axed after he made a joke about Donald Trump, related to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Before Starmer could answer, Trump – who claims free speech is under attack – cut in and answered: “Well, Jimmy Kimmel was fired because he had bad ratings more than anything else. And he said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk. “And Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”
During Monday’s episode, Kimmel had said: “We had some new lows over the weekend with the Maga [Make American Great Again] gang desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it.”
He went on to joke that a weird clip of Trump being asked how he was doing after the incident, and him immediately pivoting to his new White House ballroom, was like “a four year old mourning a goldfish.” Kimmel was fired after local broadcast affiliates were put under pressure by Trump’s communications regulator to pull his show from their air. Hours after one of them – which, coincidentally had a merger deal up for approval by the administration – did so, Disney/ABC suspended him.
8. ‘I don’t know Mandelson’
Trump was (eventually) asked whether he had sympathy for Peter Mandelson, after Keir Starmer sacked him over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein – a friendship Mandelson and Trump had in common. In response, Trump claimed: “I don’t know him.” Which is pretty weird, because Trump met Mandelson a number of times, including in the Oval Office, and is said to have got on well with him. Here’s a picture of them together.
On that particular occasion, Trump praised Mandelson for his “beautiful accent”, and gave him the floor to speak to the media. After the meeting, Mandelson was given a handwritten note which read: “Peter, great job.” Somewhere, a cock is crowing three times.
9. Trump says TikTok is ‘why we won the election’
Trump went on a bit of a tear about how TikTok helped him win the election when asked about a major deal over its operations in America. When Trump was asked whether the US will continue to use China’s “addictive” TikTok algorithm – amid an ongoing deal over the social media app – he said would be speaking to President Xi on Friday to finalise something on TikTok. He then claimed he did “unbelievably well” in the election campaign because of the “tremendous value” of TikTok. “We did unbelievably well with youth like at a level that no Republican has ever even dreamt of,” he said. “Look, I think we won it for a lot of reasons, but that [TikTok] was a reason we won the election by such a big number.”
10. Starmer shuffles his papers as Trump wangs on about the autopen
The closest to a complete breakdown in the presser was Trump’s lengthy rant about Joe Biden’s use of an “autopen” to sign documents. To be clear, all presidents use autopens. They have for decades. The state department has confirmed there’s no constitutional issue with doing so. It’s an entirely confected conspiracy theory, designed to undermine Trump’s political enemies.
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Yet, Trump said: “The people that used it, and one in particular, one person was never told by Biden to do it, only spoke to Biden twice, and that was just talking about the weather, not talking about any order. He was taking orders from people other than Joe Biden. Joe Biden wasn’t giving those orders.” Trump added: “The autopen was illegal. It was illegally used. He never gave the orders. He never told them what to do. And I guess the only one he signed, or one of the few he signed, was the pardon for his son.” It was not illegal. It was entirely legal. He went on: “But you had the congressman who, when they got the information, they found out they were guilty, and they deleted and destroyed all information, everything, you couldn’t get any of it.”
11. Trump repeated his nonsense $17 trillion figure – this time about investment
Trump repeated his ludicrous claim that the US has $17trillion of investment coming in. He made the comment despite US GDP being around $30trillion. “We did $17trillion of investment coming in. A lot of it’s because of tariffs and a lot of it’s for a lot of other reasons. But there’s never been anything like it. It’s an economic superstar.” He also kept bringing up Joe Biden, again, again and again. Trump claimed he inherited “the worst inflation in the history of our country” from the former Democrat President (Of course, excluding the world wars, the Great Depression and any other time it was higher…)
12. Marco Rubio wandered around like a lost child
Trump was accompanied at the presser by a raft of senior members of his administration. There were the familiar faces of Karoline Leavitt, and Stephen Miller, his Deputy Prince of Darkness. Also there were Secretary of State Marco Rubio, deeply weird sycophant Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnik, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant.
After the presser, as the media were filing out, Marco Rubio was kind of just wandering around Chequers and the grounds outside, looking at his phone and seemingly unsure where he was supposed to be.
Get home safe, Marco.
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