Seeking to divide

In the James Bond film Goldeneye, M, played by Judi Dench, in emphasising the value of British Secret Intelligence, contrasts it with our friends across the Pond: "Unlike the Americans, we prefer not to get our news from CNN."  That was 1995.
Now things have changed in the White House.  CNN is shunned while Fox News is lapped up ad nauseam.  This is of big concern as Fox News, as conceived by that ultimate conservative, the disgraced, late Roger Ailes, is a hive of lies, half-truths and false narratives that unites to push a right-wing extremist agenda (often successfully but to the detriment of decency).  How else would Donald Trump take the London Mayor's comments so out of context?  It wouldn't be from his intelligence briefings and he wouldn't have the gumption to seek out independently the comments of Mayor Sadiq Khan.  No, they were twisted and presented on a platter to him by his Islamophobic favourite news channel.
To recap, Khan, who when running as a candidate for London Mayor was on the receiving end of a string of innuendo about being a Muslim from his Conservative rival, said "people shouldn't be alarmed at seeing armed police officers on the street."  Trump willingly believes that Khan said people shouldn't be alarmed about a terrorist attack and goes on tweet about that and that British people should have had guns because the attackers only had a vehicle and knives (a crashing illogicality in that if the populace at large had access to guns so would the terrorists, who would then do far more damage, plus the only injury of an innocent civilian from a bullet was someone accidentally shot by police).  Trump also seeks to make political capital out of the terrorist attack by calling the resumption of his travel ban from several Muslim-majority countries, even though that would have had no impact because this happened in Britain (and the attackers may well turn out to be British citizens).
The Mayor has chosen not to comment directly, leaving his spokesman to trash the president curtly.  Yet when Theresa May, the prime minister, calls for unity, her biggest friend, the man on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seeks to undermine trust in the mayor of her capital and divide the country.  She won't condemn Trump as her intellectual vacuity leads her to believe she must uphold the transatlantic relationship at all cost. But what cost if that victimises one of the main officeholders of the UK, who just happens to be Muslim?  Megaphone diplomacy is usually crude and ineffective but in this case it's the only way to make a president using his own megaphone hear and desist, if not from our entreaties, then from the condemnation of his own electorate.