Trump Blurs Facts on London Embassy
President Donald Trump distorted the facts about the construction of a new embassy in London, wrongly implying it ended up costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The new embassy, at a cost of $1 billion, was entirely paid for by the sale of the long-term leases for the old embassy as well as other U.S. property in London, as planned since 2007, a state department official told us.
As Robert “Woody” Johnson, the Trump-appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, wrote in January, “the new embassy did not cost the US taxpayer a cent.”
Trump also said the U.S. gave up “the best site in all of London” for a “horrible location” that ended up costing the U.S. a lot more. That’s a matter of opinion, but State Department officials in the administrations of George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Trump have said that the old location, while centrally located in an historic part of London, was unable to meet modern security standards, and was already overcrowded by a growing staff.
Trump’s account about the deal:
