It’s interesting to revisit this now, given Trump’s relationship with May and Obama’s relationship with Cameron. The contrast is illustrative.
It wasn’t the back of the bus. The line was the back of the queue.
Here’s what he said, which amounts to common sense, given that (of course) we’d want a deal with the big bloc of the EU before we’d work out a deal with the UK under circumstances that hadn’t even occurred yet.
Obama argued that he had a right to respond to the claims of Brexit campaigners that Britain would easily be able to negotiate a fresh trade deal with the US. “They are voicing an opinion about what the United States is going to do, I figured you might want to hear from the president of the United States what I think the United States is going to do.
“And on that matter, for example, I think it’s fair to say that maybe some point down the line there might be a UK-US trade agreement, but it’s not going to happen any time soon because our focus is in negotiating with a big bloc, the European Union, to get a trade agreement done”.
The difference is important, and not just because Obama wasn’t tone-deaf enough to use a phrase with a racist history in the US in this particular context. At the time, people noted the word queue, which is not often used by Americans, to infer that Obama made these claims at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron.
Which turned out to be true: he was, you know, working and cooperating with the leader of the government of probably our closest ally.
You mistakenly used the term back of the bus twice, not me, so you’re the one with race on your mind. And–let me type this for you slowly so you understand:
" In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive."
