Top New Zealand Diplomat Fired Over Winston Churchill Question About Trump

A former New Zealand prime minister denounced the firing, calling it “a very thin excuse” for removing a “highly respected” former foreign minister from his role.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand’s most senior envoy to the United Kingdom has lost his job over remarks he made about U.S. President Donald Trump at an event in London this week, New Zealand’s foreign minister said Thursday.

Phil Goff, who is New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the U.K., made the comments at an event held by the international affairs think tank Chatham House in London on Tuesday.

Goff asked a question from the audience of the guest speaker, Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, in which he said he had been re-reading a famous speech by former British wartime leader Winston Churchill from 1938, when Churchill was a lawmaker in the government of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

Churchill’s speech rebuked Britain’s signing of the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler, allowing Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia. Goff quoted Churchill as saying to Chamberlain, “You had the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, yet you will have war.”

Goff then asked Valtonen: “President Trump has restored the bust of Churchill to the Oval Office. But do you think he really understands history?”