DONALD Trump has been accused of being "determined to insult" Theresa May on his visit to the UK.
Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston made the comment as the president took aim at the Prime Minister's Brexit plans in an interview for The Sun newspaper, saying they could call into question any future UK-US trade deal.
READ MORE: Pound under pressure after Trump's UK-US trade deal comments
Wollaston said: "If signing up to the #Trump world view is the price of a deal, it's not worth paying."
Emily Thornberry gave a remarkable defence of May, saying it had been "extraordinarily rude of Donald Trump to behave like this".
"She is his host. What did his mother teach him? This is not the way you behave," the shadow foreign secretary told ITV's Good Morning Britain.
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Thornberry said Trump's comments on the PM's Brexit strategy and his suggestion Johnson would be a "great prime minister" were "rudeness upon rudeness upon rudeness".
However her sympathy for the PM was not unqualified.
The Labour MP said: "You need to stand up to him. She is letting down our country by not standing up to him."
Responding to Trump's praise of Boris Johnson, Margot James, a minister at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, tweeted: "No Mr President @POTUS Boris Johnson would make a terrible PM."
Simon Hart, Tory MP for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, tweeted: "When Obama 'intervened' in the Brexit debate it was considered outrageous, so no doubt the same will be said of Trump..."
Jonathan Edwards, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, says President Trump has come to the UK "to humiliate".
Writing on Twitter, Edwards said: "Blunt 'diplomacy' by Trump but shows that the inherent hubris of the British establishment won't go very far when faced with Brexit reality. He's come to humiliate.
"Stark choice – stay within EU economic orbit without a say or crawl to opportunists like Trump for inferior deal."
Labour MP Jess Phillips said Trump's recent comments "put us in danger".
She tweeted: "It's hard to know how you would react if you wanted to keep a special relationship on which some of our security relies, but Trumps words in last 24 hours put us in danger.
"Our values, our economy, our safety. We should tell him to stop."
Wes Streeting, Labour MP for Ilford North, has called for Trump's meeting with the Queen to be cancelled.
Streeting tweeted: "Given his remarks about the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London, this would be the right moment to cancel Trump's tea with the Queen.
"He doesn't deserve it – and the Queen certainly doesn't deserve it!"
Thornberry told Sky News that although this is supposed to be a working visit, "it looks like a state visit, it quacks like a state visit, it's a state visit".
She said she for once feels sorry for the Prime Minister after Trump's criticisms.
She said: "Donald Trump ought to have listened to his mother. I am assuming that his mum told him that when you go to someone's house you do not insult the host.
"She has done everything she could to be nice to him and he has gone and slagged her off in the press saying that Boris Johnson would make a great prime minister, that she has messed up Brexit, that the trade deal is dead. This is not the way to behave and then what does she do, she holds his hand again."
Thornberry added: "I don't trust her to stand up for our country when it comes to President Trump.
"She held his hand as she went up the steps at Blenheim Palace with him after she had heard all those things he was saying about her. You do not need to do that. She does not have to hold his hand. Melania Trump does not hold his hand, why does she have to do it? She is our Prime Minister. She represents our country. She should be standing up to him."
Tory MP Anna Soubry, a strident remainer, tweeted: "The more @realDonaldTrump insults and undermines @theresa_may the more he enhances her credibility. #Trump is a guest in #UK because we respect the great office he holds. Yet again he diminishes the standing of the great country he is meant to lead #USA #TrumpUK."
London Mayor Sadiq Khan hit out at Trump's comments on crime in the capital, telling BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I have seen no evidence that this crime has been brought in by immigration from Africa or other parts of the world to Europe."
Khan defended allowing a giant balloon depicting Mr Trump as an angry baby to fly near Parliament, saying: "I shouldn't be the arbiter, as a politician, of what's in good taste or bad taste, what's important is it to be peaceful, and for it to be safe.
"And, frankly speaking, the idea that we limit the rights to protest, we limit the rights to free speech because it may cause offence to a foreign leader is a very, very slippery slope."
Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan told the Today programme: "Donald Trump is in many ways a controversialist, that's his style, that's the colour he brings to the world stage.
"And he is, in that sense, very unconventional. I don't think we see it as rude. And I think the atmosphere last night at the Blenheim dinner was very, very special actually."
Sir Alan added: "I don't think it's rude to praise Boris Johnson. I don't think that's rude at all. He's entitled to his opinion.
"But, I think the substantive discussions that will take place in Chequers today between the Prime Minister and the President will go into a lot of detail on a lot of things."
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