Donald Trump has renewed his criticism of the new US embassy in Nine Elms, London, saying it is in a “lousy” and “horrible” location and a bad deal.
The US president, who is visiting the UK on July 13, lashed out again at the move from Grosvenor Square in the centre of the capital to a new location south of the Thames.
Speaking at a rally in Michigan, he said: “In the UK, in London, we had the best site in all of London. The best site. Well, some genius said, we’re gonna sell the site and then we’re going to take the money and build a new embassy. That sounds good right, but you’ve got to have money left over if you do that, right?”
Trump said he thought – but would have to check – that officials sold the site for 250 million dollars.
He said: “They go out and they buy a horrible location. And they build a new embassy. That’s the good news. The bad news is it cost over a billion dollars.”
Trump, a billionaire who made his fortune as a property magnate, cancelled a planned trip to London to open the embassy earlier this year, complaining the move to an “off location” south of the Thames had been a “bad deal”.
It is thought his decision may have been driven by a fear of protests in the capital.
However, he repeated his assertion that it was down to dissatisfaction with the embassy project.
He told the rally on Saturday: “By the way, they wanted me to cut the ribbon on the embassy and I said I’m not going. I don’t wanna do it.
“I said, ‘I’m not cutting that ribbon’. I said ‘I’m not going’.”
Blaming his predecessors for the embassy move, Trump called it a “Bush-Obama special”, that “could have been stopped by Obama”.
But in an emollient last comment he said: “Hey, hopefully we’ll have many years of success with that embassy.”
It’s a familiar theme for Trump who earlier this year said the same thing.