Trump backs stronger UK ties with Burnham yet criticizes Chagos deal at UN meeting

Filed 5h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40)

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Trump met new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham for the first time at the UN, calling relations stronger than under predecessor Keir Starmer and praising Burnham as a natural businessperson. The two countries announced an AI partnership on infrastructure and defense, plus a successfully test-fired torpedo launched from a British underwater drone.

Trump reiterated his opposition to Britain's planned transfer of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, calling the deal ridiculous while stressing the strategic value of the Diego Garcia military base. Burnham defended Britain's sanctions on trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank, arguing continued settlement construction threatens a two-state solution, while Trump did agree with Burnham's condemnation of the October 7 Hamas attacks.

Burnham also pushed for global AI standards at a business roundtable, a position Trump directly rejected in his own UN speech, criticizing what he called efforts to impose global control over the technology.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A president praising his new counterpart's business instincts while publicly trashing that counterpart's flagship island deal isn't really friction, it's just what passes for diplomacy these days. Burnham gets the compliment and the contradiction in the same afternoon, which is a decent deal if you don't look too closely at the fine print. Everybody left the room calling it a good meeting, which usually means nobody actually agreed on anything.

Source: Read the original at Courthouse News → Scored: Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40) · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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