Barack Obama, guardian of the US-British relationship

"President Obama admitted at a British press conference Friday that the U.S. and Great Britain will always be joined at the hip in the Special Relationship. He conceded that our cultural, historical and blood ties are so strong that nothing could ever separate our two countries. He’s tried everything."

Comedian Argus Hamilton. 

Take another look at the audience at Barack Obama’s ‘town hall’ meeting in London. Is this a portrait of Britain you recognise?

"RICHARD LITTLEJOHN argues the Obamas are desperate to provide a certain agenda whenever they visit Britain"

. . . "But even so. And before the usual, brain-dead suspects start bouncing up and down, screaming ‘raaay-cist!’, let me make it abundantly clear that I am not criticising any individual in the hand-picked audience." . . .
 . . . "They were hardly going to turn down an opportunity to be in the same room as the President of the United States, although I suspect they wouldn’t have been quite so keen to get up close and personal with George W. Bush.

"What a motley crew, though. It made your average BBC Question Time audience look balanced. Needless to say, there was the obligatory number of women in Islamic headgear, without which no televised gathering can be broadcast.

"The President was introduced on Saturday not by the democratically elected Mayor of London, as one might have expected, but by 21-year-old Khadija Najefi, a political science graduate who has recently been working as a volunteer at the Jungle camp in Calais, from where thousands of migrants have been attempting to enter Britain illegally."

And of course, his visit to Saudi Arabia was not a triumphal tour either, as this Brit discusses:

John Oliver Mocks President Obama’s Saudi Arabia Trip
. . . "As Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver made clear Sunday night, the President got a chilly reception, from being snubbed at the airport right on down to the Saudi version of a C-Span cameraman who was filming the summit." . . .