Trump’s bizarre state visit gift slammed in Mandelson Files | indy100

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We don’t need to tell you that US president Donald Trump is a fan of gifts, considering that he has received a number of gold-plated items and awards from people since entering the White House for the second time – and one gift received during his second state visit to the UK in September was ridiculed behind the scenes…

That would be the red box, a custom-made item that is typically given to government ministers to store their official papers. It’s the one held aloft by chancellors before their budget.

In Trump’s case - literally - it had the presidential seal and title on it.

But now, correspondence revealed in the latest batch of files pertaining to the former US ambassador Peter Mandelson – who was sacked over his friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, also in September – has revealed exactly what the then government official thought of the idea.

One email sent by then Foreign Office chief Sir Olly Robbins said the US embassy in Washington was “clear that one of the gifts that would mean the most to the president would be a red dispatch box with the gold crest and lettering mimicking a UK Government ministerial box but with ‘President of the United States’ inscribed upon it”.

Meanwhile, an email from Lord Mandelson to UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney reads: “The saga goes on. See Olly email. This is like something out of [The] Thick of It.”

That being the Armando Iannucci satire about politicians and senior civils servant working in the corridors of government, of which Veep is the US sister sitcom.

Another email from Lord Mandelson sees the then ambassador write: “What the attachment says is that Whitehall has known about [redacted] since February and it was confirmed in early July and nobody had the wit to say anything. What incompetence.”

And it seems Lord Mandelson isn’t the only one to compare the situation to a British sitcom:

“I can imagine Bernard and Sir Humphrey discussing this and setting up 3 different committees to end up deciding it wasn’t legal,” wrote one X/Twitter user, referencing the characters from Yes, Minister:

Another said it was a “perfect encapsulation of the Government”:

And Talk host Julia Hartley-Brewer tweeted of the incident: “No wonder they never get anything useful done”:

Needless to say, when it came to sorting out the gift for Trump, government officials didn’t exactly think outside the box…

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