New Zealand fires envoy to UK after ‘deeply disappointing’ Trump comments
Phil Goff questioned the US president’s understanding of history at an event in London
The comments are “deeply disappointing,” a spokesman for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in an emailed statement on Thursday in Wellington. “They do not represent the views of the New Zealand government and make his position as High Commissioner to London untenable.”
Local media reported that Goff made comments at an event in London earlier this week that questioned Trump’s understanding of history, contrasting him with former British prime minister Winston Churchill in the lead up to second world war.
Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been rereading a famous speech by Churchill from 1938, when Churchill was a lawmaker in the government of prime minister Neville Chamberlain.
Churchill’s speech rebuked Britain’s signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. Goff quoted Churchill as saying to Chamberlain, “You had the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, yet you will have war.”
Goff then asked Valtonen: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”