BRANCHBURG (USA) — United States President Donald Trump is considering scrapping or postponing a planned visit to Britain later this year amid a billowing backlash over comments he made after the recent terrorist attack in London, two administration officials said.

Over the past week, Mr Trump has expressed increasing scepticism to aides about the trip after coming under intense criticism for a misleading charge that he leveled against London's mayor, Mr Sadiq Khan. A day after terrorists killed eight people in the British capital, Mr Trump went after Mr Khan on Twitter, saying the mayor had played down the danger to citizens in the wake of the assault.

The White House briefly considered including the visit scheduled as part of a trip to Europe next month, but the idea was dropped because of scheduling issues. Then it was tentatively penciled in for the fall. National Security Council and State Department officials were working on the details, but had not undertaken the usual "pre-advance" trip to work out the specific logistics of joint appearances, said a person familiar with the situation.

Mr Trump, who was visiting his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, over the weekend, has not definitively ruled out going, the officials said. They emphasized that it was possible that the president would eventually warm to the idea, and that keeping it off the schedule was the best way to prepare for any eventuality.

One other factor leading to his reluctance, said one of the officials, is his preference for having foreign leaders visit him —not the other way around.

But optics and politics are major considerations, too. Mr Trump is deeply unpopular in Britain, and any visit by him would probably be met with wide-scale protests.

Mr Trump has discussed the potential difficulties of a trip to Britain with Prime Minister Theresa May, who had a stunning setback in parliamentary elections on Thursday, although the subject of a visit was not raised when they spoke on the phone last week, the officials said.

Mrs May's office, responding to a report in The Guardian that Mr Trump did not want to visit Britain until he had more public support, issued a statement on Sunday (June 11) saying there had been "no change" to plans for a state visit. NEW YORK TIMES