Trump hits out at UK’s May over criticism of sharing far-right videos

London (Reuters): US President Donald Trump sharply rebuked British Prime Minister Theresa May on Twitter after Britain criticised him for retweeting anti-Islam videos originally posted by a leader of a British far-right fringe party.

His tweet, in which he told May to focus on terrorism instead of him, was an unprecedented public attack on the leader of the United States’ closest security ally.

“Theresa @theresamay, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine,” Trump tweeted.

The tweet was a reaction to a comment from May’s spokesman, who said on Wednesday in response to Trump’s retweets of the anti-Islam videos: “It is wrong for the president to have done this.”

Trump had sparked a storm of criticism on both sides of the Atlantic on Wednesday by sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of anti-immigration fringe group Britain First, who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman.

Islamist militants have carried out several major attacks in Britain this year that have killed a total of 36 people, including a bombing in Manchester and two attacks on bridges in London in which victims were rammed with vehicles and stabbed.

A spokesman for May’s Downing Street office in London declined to comment on Trump’s tweet on Thursday. May was on a trip to the Middle East.

Trump initially addressed his tweet to a Twitter handle that is not May‘s, though he later retweeted to the British leader’s account.

Since Trump became president, May has gone out of her way to cultivate a good relationship with him, as Britain prepares to exit the European Union in 2019.

She was the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration, and they were filmed emerging from the White House holding hands. She also invited him to make a state visit to Britain, angering Trump’s many critics in Britain.

Trump’s tweet drew outraged reactions in Britain, including from Brendan Cox, the husband of lawmaker Jo Cox who was murdered in 2016 by a far-right extremist.

“You have a mass shooting every single day in your country, your murder rate is many times that of the UK, your healthcare system is a disgrace, you can’t pass anything through a Congress that you control. I would focus on that,” Cox tweeted.

The videos shared by Trump purported to show a group of people who were Muslims beating a teenage boy to death, battering a boy on crutches and destroying a Christian statue. Reuters was unable to verify the videos.

British lawmakers demanded that Trump make an apology for retweeting the videos, while U.S. Muslim groups said the president’s action was incendiary and reckless.

Tom Tugendhat, a lawmaker from May’s Conservative Party who was previously in the military, wrote: “I went to war alongside courageous @USArmy to fight extremism, not promote it. It’s not ok to ignore vile racism and worse to back it.”

Britain First’s Fransen welcomed Trump’s retweeting of the videos.

“I‘m delighted,” Fransen, who has 53,000 Twitter followers, told Reuters. She said Trump’s retweets showed the president shared her aim of raising awareness of “issues such as Islam”.

The White House defended the retweets by the Republican president, who during the 2016 U.S. election campaign called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, saying that he was raising security issues.

It repeatedly refused to be drawn into the content of the videos or whether Trump was aware of the source of the tweets.

“It’s about ensuring that individuals who come into the United States don’t pose a public safety or terrorism threat,” White House spokesman Raj Shah told reporters aboard Air Force One.