London Mayor Sadiq Khan is calling on the U.K. to cancel U.S. President Donald Trump’s state visit.
Since the attack took place on June 2, Trump has posted a flurry of tweets criticizing the mayor’s behaviour after the attack and the need for the courts to clear the way for his proposed travel ban.
“At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says “no reason to be alarmed,” read one of Trump’s tweets.
In response to those statements, Khan told a reporter in an interview on Britain’s Channel 4 news that London shouldn’t be “rolling out the red carpet to the president of the U.S.A. in the circumstances that his policies go against everything we stand for.”
On June 2, a van barrelled through a crowd of pedestrians on London Bridge and three men later attacked people inside restaurants and pubs near Borough Market. Seven people were killed during the attack.
Trump posted several tweets about the attack and took the chance to promote the travel ban he proposed a few months ago. That ban has been blocked by several American courts. The U.S. Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to overturn those lower court decisions.
During his interview on Channel 4, Khan told a reporter, “I just don’t have time to answer tweets from Donald Trump.”
Despite Khan’s calls for cancelling the visit, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in an interview on BBC radio Tuesday he saw no reason to do so.
“The invitation has been issued and accepted and I see no reason to change that but as far as what Sadiq Khan has said about the reassurances he’s offered the people of London, I think he was entirely right to speak in the way he did.”
Johnson also said he saw no reason to “enter a row” between two people who are “perfectly able to stick up for themselves.”
— With a file from Reuters