In the Court of St. James: President Trump was meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May today, a day after he gave an insulting interview to the tabloid paper, The Sun.

Trump told The Sun  that May’s plan for a “soft exit” from the EU, maintaining close ties, would kill any trade deal with the US. “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.”

Trump said, “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me.”

The President also said that former London Mayor Boris Johnson, a British version of Trump who just resigned from the government, would make a great Prime Minister.

Thousands of protesters gathered today in London, demonstrating against President Trump’s immigration policies and just about everything Trump. The gathering included a giant blowup likeness of a plump and howling baby Trump in a diaper.

Absolutely Fabulous: On departing from the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump announced that he had won new commitments from the member countries to quicken their pace of defense spending. The leaders of France and Italy were quick to say no one had agreed to anything new.

In a 40-minute press conference following the NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump took credit for just about everything except building the Great Wall of China, but that happened before he became President.

A montage of Trumpeting: “And now we’re very happy and have a very, very powerful, very, very strong NATO, much stronger than it was two days ago … I brought it up; nobody brought it up but me, and we all are talking about it now … And everybody in the room thanked me … I’m very consistent.  I’m a very stable genius … You know what was happening with spending prior to my getting into office.  The numbers were going down.  Now the numbers have gone up like a rocket ship … They actually thanked me for meeting with President Putin.  I look forward to the meeting.  They thanked me.  They thought it was a great thing that I was doing it … I’m going to Scotland while I wait for the meeting.  I have Turnberry in Scotland, which is a magical place — one of my favorite places … So I’ve taken over a lot of bad hands, and I’m fixing each one of them and I’m fixing them well … You know, we’ve picked up $8 trillion in value, in worth, since I became President.”

And last, on the British exit from the European Union, known as “Brexit,” Trump said, “And I do think I have — I’m sure there will be protests, because there are always protests.  But I think — there were protests the night of the election, both ways.  But in the end, we got 206 electoral — 306 electoral votes.  And one state said — you know, it was interesting, one of the states we won, Wisconsin — I didn’t even realize this until fairly recently — that was the one state Ronald Reagan didn’t win when he ran the board his second time.  He didn’t win Wisconsin, and we won Wisconsin.  So, you know, we had a great night.”

Now Hear This: Things got nasty yesterday when FBI agent Peter Strozk, a frequent target of President Trump, testified before a Congressional committee. Strozk, who had sent hundreds of text messages to a fellow employee criticizing Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, said his dislike of Trump never influenced decisions he made regarding the Hillary Clinton emails and the Russia investigation.

Republicans are using Strzok’s anti-Trump texts to discredit the Russia investigation.

At one point Strzok said he didn’t appreciate it when Rep. Trey Gowdy misquoted something he had said. Gowdy snapped back, “I don’t give a damn what you appreciate Agent Strzok, I don’t appreciate having an FBI agent with an unprecedented level of animus working on two major investigations here in 2016.”

Other Stuff: A Missouri jury ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $4.69 billion to 22 women and their families who claimed that asbestos in the company’s talcum powder caused them to develop ovarian cancer. It’s a stunningly high figure and the company is appealing. — After being told by a federal judge not to bother appealing his decision to approve the merger between communication giants AT&T and Time Warner, the federal government appealed. — Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says trade talks with China have broken down amid a nasty tariff war. — The White House declared that the decades-long war on poverty is “largely over and a success,” presenting an argument for a work requirement to receive government aid. This will come as a surprise to the 13 percent of Americans who live in a state of poverty.

Cold Case: The federal government has quietly reopened an investigation into the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, possibly the most notorious killings of a black male in the era of lynchings. The Justice Department said it has discovered new evidence, although this long after the murder it’s unlikely anyone will be charged. The two men cleared of the murder by an all-white jury … both of whom later confessed … are now dead.

Till was killed after a white woman claimed he said crude sexual things to her and touched her hand. One of the killers was her husband.

At a time when killings of black men were common, Till’s murder drew attention because of his mother’s decision to hold his funeral with an open casket, revealing his face grotesquely disfigured by beating and torture.

Twitter Purge: Twitter says it is purging millions of fake accounts, including the fake followers bought by celebrities and wannabes. Actor Ashton Kutcher, for one, lost a million followers. Jimmy Kimmel said it turned out that his own father was a Russian bot. President Trump’s account is still up so it appears that all that stuff he tweets is real.

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