Winston Churchill’s grandson has expressed horror at the Trump administration’s sympathy towards Russia, saying US foreign policy is being driven by a “deep and profound misunderstanding of the truth”.
Addressing US Republicans in the UK at the international relations select committee, Lord Soames of Fletching, 77, said it was “impossible … to take the president seriously” after the Trump administration twice voted with Moscow at the United Nations in recent days.
“How is it possible that America could have voted at the UN alongside Russia, Syria, the Central African Republic, North Korea and Belarus? How is that possible?” Soames asked.
In votes last month, the US opposed a European-drafted resolution condemning the Russian invasion and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The Trump administration then drafted and voted for a UN security council resolution that called for an end to the three-year conflict but refrained from criticising Russia.
Soames condemned the “extraordinary … perversion of the so-called Republican Party” under President Trump’s leadership, which “can genuinely think Putin was not the aggressor in Ukraine, and then expect the world to believe it”.
He lambasted the “repulsive defenestration” of President Zelensky of Ukraine at his disastrous Oval Office meeting with Trump and JD Vance two weeks ago. Soames suggested that Zelensky had been humiliated “in public as part of a television show”.
“It all creates a really bad impression,” he said.
Addressing Greg Swenson and Jennifer Ewing of the Republicans Overseas UK group, Soames rounded on Trump’s repeated claim that the EU was established to “screw America”. The president has used the claim to justify demanding a massive increase in European defence spending and to impose tariffs on foreign imports.
“Without the Americans there wouldn’t have been a European Union. It is a perversion of history, and it’s very worrying to me that America’s policy is being driven by a deep and profound misunderstanding of the truth,” Soames said. “The president hasn’t a clue.”
He added that Trump’s campaign promise that he would end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours was “a very silly thing to say”.
Despite launching his aggressive America First trade and defence policy since returning to the White House, Trump has made a show of pursuing cordial relations with the UK. The president restored a bust of Winston Churchill to the Oval Office that has become a symbol of fluctuations in the “special relationship” between the US and UK under recent administrations.
Trump held a friendly meeting with Sir Keir Starmer at the White House two weeks ago. The prime minister delivered an invitation from King Charles for the president to make an unprecedented second state visit to the UK.
That meeting was overshadowed within 24 hours, however, as the meeting between Trump, Vance and Zelensky imploded in a heated row. Trump accused his counterpart of “gambling with World War Three”, while Vance said that Zelensky had been “disrespectful”, before the Ukrainian delegation was thrown out of the White House.
Last week, Soames dismissed the restoration of his grandfather’s bust to the Oval Office, claiming that Trump’s team “despise Europe, really”.
“The sort of awful ghastliness of whether or not there is a head of Churchill in the Oval Office and what that means for the Americans, for the special relationship, is just simply rubbish,” he said.
Pushing back on Soames’s remarks, Ewing insisted that Trump was “an anti-war president and he wants to end this war”. The exchange at the committee came a day after Ukraine accepted a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the conflict.
“We’re closer than we’ve ever been in the last three years,” Ewing said. “I think the president has actually got things going. We’ll see if he’s successful.”
