MEDIA WATCH: Brit MPs debate Trump visit

  BRITISH MPs on Monday, Feb. 2  debated a  petition signed ny 1.8 million people calling for President Donald Trump’s planned state visit to the UK to be cancelled – and they did not hold back reports The Week.

Outside the Houses if Parliament thousands of protestors demonstrated against the visit.

Veteran MP Paul Flynn led the charge, describing the Republican as “like a petulant child” and “the least popular American President ever in this country”.

He also, responding to a concern raised by Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas about Trump’s climate change denialism, said it was “extraordinary that Trump, from the cavernous depths of his scientific ignorance, is prepared to challenge the conclusions of 97 per cent of the world experts”.

He added: “The President’s power is enormous, but unfortunately his intellectual capacity is protozoan.”

Dewsbury MP Paula Sherriff said Trump’s recorded use of the phrase “grab ’em by the pussy” “describes a sexual assault”, and when the subject moved on to the President’s position on race, MP David Lammy claimed “many African Americans there are sitting at home in fear” because their new leader “has the support of the Ku Klux Klan” and “welcomed white supremacists… into his close inner circle”.

Bradford West MP Naz Shah echoed his concerns, saying: “[Trump’s] rhetoric has been so broad that I personally, as a Muslim, feel attacked and misrepresented.”

Former SNP leader Alex Salmond called for Prime Minister Theresa May’s invite to Trump to be rescinded before it caused more “embarrassment and division”.

He added: “It is difficult to know whether to be appalled at the morality of the invitation or just astonished by its stupidity.”

However, many speakers argued the state visit should go ahead, with several commenting on what they saw as the hypocrisy of MPs rejecting Trump while welcoming past visits from leaders of nations with far worse human rights violations.

“[Chinese President] Xi Jinping was here last year,” Conservative MP Nigel Evans said. “Where were the demonstrations then?”

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg was also unconvinced by his colleagues’ righteous wrath.

He also objected to Flynn’s quotation of a passage by journalist Andrew Rawnsley, in which he referred to “pimping out” the Queen.

Others argued that Trump’s office as leader of the UK’s most important ally deserved the respect many MPs felt they could not accord the man himself.

Conservative Mark Pritchard acknowledged that some of the President’s views were “very distasteful indeed”, but suggested the “special relationship” between the two nations “goes beyond any individual who might happen to occupy the White House at any particular time”.