GLASGOW, Scotland -- President Donald Trump told British Prime Minister Theresa May that she should sue the European Union for a faster withdrawal from the bloc, May said Sunday.
"He told me I should sue the EU -- not go into negotiations, sue them," May told the BBC in an interview published Sunday. "Actually, no, we're going into negotiations with them."
May did not provide details of what sort of legal case the U.S. president had in mind. However, May quickly added that the president had urged her not to leave the bargaining table.
"Interestingly, what the president also said at that press conference was, 'Don't walk away. Don't walk away from negotiations, cause then you're stuck,'" May told the BBC. "So I want us to be able to sit down to negotiate the best deal for Britain."
During his long business career, Trump has been famously litigious. When he was elected president, at least 75 cases involving him or his companies were underway, according to USA Today, whose investigation identified more than 3,500 lawsuits involving Trump over three decades, ranging from contract disputes and real estate battles to harassment and discrimination claims.
May and Trump have disagreed on how May should handle the exit from the bloc. Trump has often begun calls by asking her to rush the process.
Last week, May published details of an agreement reached by her Cabinet on how trade could work in the future, but that prompted the resignation of two senior ministers, including Boris Johnson, who quit as foreign secretary, saying that the plan would not deliver the exit deal that people had voted for in Britain's 2016 referendum. Under May's agreement, Britain and the EU would remain in a free market for goods, with a more distant relationship for services.
Johnson is expected to increase the pressure on the prime minister in a newspaper article today that is likely to expand on his reasons for resigning. While he was still in his job, Johnson compared May's negotiating style, unfavorably, to that of Trump. And in an interview with Britain's The Sun, Trump suggested that Johnson, a Conservative Party rival of May's, would make a great prime minister.
May's Conservative government is now deeply split between supporters of a clean break with the EU and those who want to keep close ties with the bloc, Britain's biggest trading partner. Ahead of a key week of Parliament votes on trade and customs policy, May warned party rebels on Sunday they should fall into line, saying that wrecking her blueprint for a split from the EU could result in disaster.
"We need to keep our eyes on the prize. If we don't, we risk ending up with no Brexit at all," she wrote in an article in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, using the colloquial term for the British exit.
She acknowledged that some lawmakers had doubts about her plans to stick to a "common rule book" with the bloc for goods and agricultural products in return for free trade, without tariffs or border customs checks, but insisted she couldn't see a viable alternative.
Later Sunday, Robert Courts said he was quitting as a parliamentary private secretary -- an unpaid ministerial aide -- at the foreign office to "express discontent" with May's policy before votes on the policy in Parliament today.
On Sunday, another hard-line supporter of Britain's exit from the EU, Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg, called on May to change policy, using the term for someone who wanted Britain to remain in the European Union during the 2016 referendum. May, he contended, was "a Remainer who remains a Remainer."
Trump has made clear his animosity toward the EU, aggressively criticizing his European NATO allies. He called the EU a "foe" in a CBS interview that aired Sunday.
"I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they do to us in trade," Trump said in the interview. "Now, you wouldn't think of the European Union, but they're a foe. Russia is foe in certain respects. China is a foe economically, certainly they are a foe. But that doesn't mean they are bad."
Saying the EU is "very difficult," Trump berated the 28-member union over trade -- complaining that European nations have taken advantage of the United States. He also continued criticisms of NATO that he began at the start of his Europe trip, saying other nations in the alliance weren't spending enough money on national defense.
"Don't forget both my parents were born in EU sectors, OK?" Trump said in the CBS interview, referring to his Scottish-born mother and to his father, who was born in New York to German immigrants. "You know I love those countries. I respect the leaders of those countries. But in a trade sense, they've really taken advantage of us and many of those countries are in NATO and they weren't paying their bills."
European Council President Donald Tusk quickly fired back on Twitter, saying, "America and the EU are best friends. Whoever says we are foes is spreading fake news."
Information for this article was contributed by Josh Dawsey and Seung Min Kim of The Washington Post; Stephen Castle of The New York Times; and by Sylvia Hui of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/16/2018