U.K. ambassador in leaked memos: Trump is 'insecure' and 'incompetent'

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 7 July 2019

The cat's out of the bag. It turns out that the United Kingdom's ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch, doesn't think too highly of the Trump administration.

Leaked diplomatic cables sent from Darroch back to London describe President Trump as "inept," "insecure," and "incompetent," a U.K. government official confirmed to CNN on Saturday. The memos reportedly span from 2017 to the present day.

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But the British Foreign Office is not exactly trying to cover up the ambassador's words or dispute the memos' existence. "The British public would expect our ambassadors to provide ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country," a British Foreign Office spokeswoman said. "Their views are not necessarily the views of ministers or indeed the government. We pay them to be candid." The spokeswoman did call the leak "mischievous" behavior, but said that it will not damage relations between London and Washington, The Guardian reports.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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