Trump Condemns UK Chagos Deal Amid Greenland Push (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: An act of great stupidity. The words of President Trump publicly shaming arguably his closest ally, the UK, and its Prime Minister Keir Starmer for agreeing to give up control of the Chagos Islands. So what is going on here? Well, we're talking about a remote chain of islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, close to Mauritius. But crucially, they are home to a strategically important US-UK military base at Diego Garcia. The islands have been under British control since 1814. At the time, Mauritius was under British control as well. But in the 1960s, the UK separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius. And then three years later, Mauritius became independent. And ever since then, they've really argued that the Chagos Islands belong to Mauritius. In 2022, the UK finally started to negotiate with Mauritius about handing over control of the islands. And eventually a deal was done in return for continued access to the US and UK military base. The UK agreed to pay Mauritius $100 million around that a year. When the UK struck this deal with Mauritius, the US seemed to welcome it. This is what Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, said at the time. President Trump expressed his support for this monumental achievement. But it's clear that Donald Trump has since changed his mind because in a post on Truth Social, Trump called the deal an act of great stupidity and claimed that it's, quote, another in a very long line of national security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. So this obviously comes at a time when President Trump is trying to take over Greenland and is facing a lot of opposition from Europe, including the UK. Nevertheless, the British government has been caught off guard by this Chagos Island statement, a spokesperson saying, we acted because the base on Diego Garcia was under threat after court decisions undermined our position and would have prevented it operating as intended in future.