Trump launches Twitter tirades at China, CNN and London Mayor during state visit

As US President Donald Trump’s plane touched down in the UK he was already on Twitter launching a broadside at London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

He also appeared to use some downtime before meeting the Queen to watch TV and berate both “fake news” CNN and China.

Mr Trump is famous for using social media to put across his views to his 60.8 million followers.

An analysis of his tweets during his first year in office found that the president tweeted about himself more than he tweeted about America.

The Press Association analysis, published in January 2018, found Mr Trump used the first person or his own name in more than 20% of tweets.

After himself, Mr Trump’s favourite topic of conversation on Twitter was the country he leads: mentioning the words “America”, “American”, “USA”, “U.S.”, “U.S.A”, “United States” or “our great country” in just over 18.1% of all tweets.

The media – described variously as “fake news”, “failing”, “dishonest” and “corrupt” – also featured heavily – in a little over 10%.

President Trump state visit to UK – Day One
President Trump state visit to UK – Day One

The analysis also found that nearly 40% of his tweets were sent before 10am, when Mr Trump is famously rumoured to regularly watch the Fox News channel’s breakfast show, Fox And Friends.

As Mr Trump touched down at Stansted Airport on Monday morning, he branded London Mayor Mr Khan a “stone cold loser” in a Twitter tirade where he misspelled the Labour politician’s name as “Kahn”.

After being taken by helicopter to Winfield House, the US ambassador’s residence in the capital, he then launched further salvos at China and CNN.

He said: “China is subsidizing its product in order that it can continue to be sold in the USA.

“Many firms are leaving China for other countries, including the United States, in order to avoid paying the Tariffs. No visible increase in costs or inflation, but U.S. is taking Billions!”

Mr Trump branded CNN “fake news” and said he had turned the news channel off after a “short while”, suggesting that one of the first things he did on arriving in the UK was to switch on the television.

He added: “Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S.

“After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?”

I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2019

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