Donald Trump Jr is facing a backlash for criticizing London mayor Sadiq Khan with a scornful tweet sent hours after an attack at the Houses of Parliament left four dead, including a police officer. 
 
 Westminster attack: parliament resumes with tributes to PC Keith Palmer – live Read more 
 
 The US president’s eldest son tweeted a link to a September 2016 story in the Independent, which quoted Khan saying terror attacks were “part and parcel of living in a big city”, and “I want to be reassured that every single agency and individual involved in protecting our city has the resources and expertise they need to respond in the event that London is attacked.” 
 
 “You have to be kidding me?!” Trump Jr tweeted, quoting the headline: “Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan”. 
 
 Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) You have to be kidding me?!: Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan https://t.co/uSm2pwRTjO 
 
 It’s unclear if the president’s son read the article or understood that the quote was from six months ago and not a response to the Wednesday attack, which police are treating as a terrorist incident. 
 
 
 
 Authorities said five people died [see footnote], including a police officer stabbed by a lone attacker trying to enter the House of Commons. The suspect was fatally shot, and 29 people have been injured. 
 
 The tweet earned strong criticisms in the US and the UK, including from Wes Streeting, the MP for Ilford North and former president of the National Union of Students. 
 
 “You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London’s Mayor for your own political gain. You’re a disgrace,” Streeting wrote. 
 
 Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) @DonaldJTrumpJr You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London's Mayor for your own political gain. You're a disgrace. 
 
 “Is this helpful @DonaldJTrumpJr?” tweeted Ciaran Jenkins, a correspondent with Channel 4 News. “Did you even read the article before goading London’s Mayor during a live incident?” 
 
 “Headline is based on very first sentence, which if you’d bothered to read it could apply to any major city in the world,” Jenkins added. 
 
 Others on Twitter pointed Trump Jr to Khan’s actual response to the attack on Wednesday, in which he said: “Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism.” 
 
 
 
 “I want to reassure all Londoners and all our visitors not to be alarmed. Our city remains one of the safest in the world. London is the greatest city in the world. And we stand together in the face of those who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life. We always have and we always will,” the mayor said. 
 
 Khan’s 2016 comments came after a bombing in New York City that injured 29 people. 
 
 This is not the first time Trump Jr has gotten into trouble for his tweets. In September, he compared Syrian refugees to poisoned Skittles, prompting widespread backlash. He also faced criticisms for sharing a white supremacist meme. 
 
 The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But later on Wednesday Trump Jr wrote in an email to the New York Times: “I’m not going to comment on every tweet I send.” 
 
 • This footnote was added on 23 March 2017: Authorities said on 22 March that five people had died, including the attacker, but in the morning of 23 March police revised the total to four. ||||| Trump's tweet on Sunday mischaracterized London Mayor Sadiq Khan's comment following the attack on the London Bridge and Borough Market. | Getty Trump intensifies criticism of London mayor on Twitter 
 
 President Donald Trump on Monday escalated his rhetoric toward London Mayor Sadiq Khan, days after a terror attack struck London. 
 
 “Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his ‘no reason to be alarmed’ statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!” Trump tweeted Monday morning. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Saturday’s attack on the London Bridge and Borough Market claimed seven lives and left dozens more hospitalized. Police shot dead three attackers within eight minutes of the first emergency call. 
 
 Khan condemned the attack on Sunday, telling BBC that he’s “appalled and furious” at what the “cowardly terrorists” did. He said there’s no justification for their actions but insisted terrorism will never win. He added that there would be an increased police presence but urged Londoners not to be alarmed by it, prompting a response from the U.S. president. 
 
 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’” Trump tweeted Sunday morning, mischaracterizing the mayor’s comment. 
 
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 Trump’s social media director, Dan Scavino, reupped a tweet from May 2016 — when Khan called Trump’s view of Islam “ignorant” and warned that “[i]t risks alienating mainstream Muslims” — in which Scavino said Trump isn’t being politically correct but making America safe and great again. 
 
 “@MayorofLondon- refer to below tweet 13 months ago, after you criticized … now President @realDonaldTrump --- and WAKE UP!!!!” Scavino wrote Sunday. 
 
 Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, did not respond to the White House’s attack. 
 
 “The Mayor is busy working with the police, emergency services, and the government to coordinate the response to this horrific and cowardly terrorist attack and provide leadership and reassurance to Londoners and visitors to our city,” Khan’s office said in a statement Sunday. “He has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police — including armed officers — on the streets.” 
 
 Lewis Lukens, the acting U.S. ambassador to London, broke with Trump on Sunday, tweeting to “commend the strong leadership of the @MayorofLondon as he leads the city forward after this heinous attack.” 
 
 And when asked about Trump’s weekend tweet, British Prime Minister Theresa May said during a press conference on Monday that Khan was doing a good job following the London Bridge attack and that it was “wrong to say anything else.” 
 
 Trump’s latest tweet came after he conceded that his administration’s executive order temporarily suspending visa issuance to citizens of six majority-Muslim countries is indeed “a TRAVEL BAN!” and blasted his own Justice Department for revising his original order. 
 
 “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original Travel Ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.” Trump tweeted. “In any event we are EXTREME VETTING people coming into the U.S. in order to help keep our country safe. The courts are slow and political!” 
 
 Trump’s aides had once contended that the executive order was not a ban, despite the president’s use of the term. Critics have argued that the ban, which has been held up by the courts, is the same Muslim ban Trump proposed during the campaign. ||||| Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Donald Trump Jr is now executive director of The Trump Organization 
 
 President Donald Trump's son has come under fire for criticising London's mayor, shortly after a terror attack on the UK capital killed three people. 
 
 Donald Trump Jr tweeted an article written last year, in which Sadiq Khan said terror vigilance had become "part and parcel" of life in a global city. 
 
 Mr Trump quoted the headline and tweeted: "You have to be kidding me?!" 
 
 He angered many Britons who accused him of exploiting the tragedy and implying the quotes were made after the attack. 
 
 Dozens were hurt in Wednesday's attack, when an assailant drove a car through pedestrians on Westminster Bridge and then fatally knifed a police officer who tried to stop him entering the Houses of Parliament. He was then shot dead. 
 
 Two hours later, Mr Trump tweeted an article from the Independent newspaper in September 2016. 
 
 Image copyright Twitter 
 
 In the article, Mr Khan was speaking shortly before a meeting with New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, on the day after three bombs exploded in New York City and nearby towns, wounding 29 people. 
 
 The attacks had given him a sleepless night, he said, as he pondered the dangers faced by big Western cities like New York and London. 
 
 "Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you have to be prepared for these sorts of things, you have to be vigilant, you have to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you have to support the security services," he said. 
 
 On Wednesday, after the attack in Westminster, the mayor said that Londoners "will never be cowed by terrorism" and that the city stood together in the face of those seeking it harm. 
 
 Mr Trump's tweet incensed many British people on Twitter, including MP Wes Streeting, who called him a "disgrace" for exploiting the tragedy. 
 
 Image copyright Twitter/@wesstreeting 
 
 Others accused him of implying that Mr Khan's comments were made after the attack. 
 
 Image copyright Twitter/@marie_donn 
 
 Mr Khan, London's first Muslim mayor, has previously clashed with Mr Trump's father, in January denouncing the US president's travel ban as "shameful and cruel". 
 
 Last year, he accused the then-candidate Trump of being "ignorant" about Islam. 
 
 Mr Trump responded by challenging the mayor to an IQ test. ||||| Story highlights "You have to be kidding me?!" Trump Jr. tweeted 
 
 Khan and Trump had sharp words for each other during the campaign 
 
 This story has been updated to reflect the latest number of fatalities from London Metropolitan Police. 
 
 Washington (CNN) President Trump's son is criticizing the mayor of London in the immediate aftermath of an attack in the city that killed four and wounded about 40 on the grounds of the UK Parliament. 
 
 Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., manages the Trump Organization and has no role in the White House, but he remains an occasional surrogate for his father. The younger Trump also occasionally calls out the President's political opponents on Twitter, the venue he chose Wednesday to weigh in on the incident in Britain. 
 
 You have to be kidding me?!: Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan https://t.co/uSm2pwRTjO — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 22, 2017 
 
 "You have to be kidding me?!" Trump Jr. tweeted, as he shared an article from The Independent, and paraphrased its headline as: "Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan" 
 
 The article, published in September 2016 , featured Khan's reaction to a bombing in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. In it, Khan said that preparedness for terror attacks is "part and parcel of living in a big city," and asked Londoners to be correspondingly "vigilant." 
 
 Twitter reacts 
 
 Read More ||||| A traditional president would have reacted carefully to the London Bridge terrorist attack by instilling calm, being judicious about facts and appealing to the country’s better angels. 
 
 But Donald Trump is no traditional president. He reacted impulsively to Saturday night’s carnage by stoking panic and fear, being indiscreet with details of the event and capitalizing on it to advocate for one of his more polarizing policies and to advance a personal feud. 
 
 Before British authorities detailed exactly what happened on the London Bridge, before they blamed Islamist extremism and even before they publicly concluded it was an act of terrorism, President Trump fired off a tweet to his 31 million followers: An unconfirmed bulletin from the Drudge Report. 
 
 “Fears of new terror attack after van ‘mows down 20 people’ on London Bridge . . . ,” read the Drudge tweet, which Trump retweeted. 
 
 Before offering his condolences to the British people, the victims of three gruesome attacks in as many months, Trump pecked out a second tweet. “We need to be smart, vigilant and tough,” the president wrote, calling on U.S. courts to affirm his administration’s travel ban on people from six majority-Muslim nations. 
 
 President Trump holds a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May at the White House on Jan. 27. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post) 
 
 Later that evening, Trump spoke with British Prime Minister Theresa May and extended his support for America’s closest ally. He tweeted, “Whatever the United States can do to help out in London and the U. K., we will be there — WE ARE WITH YOU. GOD BLESS!” 
 
 On Sunday morning, however, once the breadth of the horror in London was clear, Trump was back on Twitter. He criticized the city’s mayor — Sadiq Khan, a liberal Muslim and an old Trump foil — for not being tough enough protecting his citizens. 
 
 “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!’ ” Trump tweeted. 
 
 Trump took Khan’s quote out of context. The mayor had urged Londoners, in a BBC interview that was replayed, not to be “alarmed” by an increased police presence in the city. He said that after condemning the “deliberate and cowardly attack” as “barbaric.” 
 
 A Khan representative swatted away Trump’s taunt, saying in a statement that the mayor “has more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks urging Londoners not to be alarmed when they saw more police — including armed officers — on the streets.” 
 
 Trump also stoked the long-running and emotionally charged national debate over gun laws by pointing out that the London attackers did not use firearms. “Do you notice we are not having a gun debate right now? That’s because they used knives and a truck!” Trump tweeted. 
 
 Britain has some of the world’s strictest laws on gun purchases. The death toll in London might have been higher had the attackers used the kind of semiautomatic weapons that are more easily attainable in the United States. 
 
 London Mayor Sadiq Khan, flanked by emergency workers, visits the site of a derailed tram in Croydon last November. (Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images) 
 
 White House officials did not respond to questions about Trump’s comments on Sunday. 
 
 With Trump spending another day at his private golf club in Sterling, Va., the White House’s social media director, Dan Scavino, revived an old Trump-Khan feud on Twitter and scolded the mayor to “WAKE UP!!!!” 
 
 Chris Lu, who served as White House Cabinet secretary under President Barack Obama, was aghast. 
 
 “The fact that the White House social media director is commenting before the national security leadership has spoken is yet another example of Trump’s ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ attitude towards handling international incidents,” Lu said. 
 
 Historian Robert Dallek said Trump is exhibiting an entirely new style of presidential leadership. “Trump rubs everything raw,” he said. “He makes it more acerbic, more contentious.” 
 
 Dallek, who has studied former president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who steered the country through Pearl Harbor, was unsparing in his critique of Trump’s response to the London attack. 
 
 “There’s something so petty about this man,” Dallek said. “What we’re dealing with is someone who is, and I think this is the best term, an egomaniac. Everything has to revolve around him — he knows better, he’s right, he one-ups everything.” 
 
 Trump’s supporters are likely to see his swift flurry of commentary as evidence of strength and unwavering resolve — a leader dispatching with political correctness and caution to deliver an assessment that is authentic and immediate. 
 
 This is just how Trump behaved on the campaign trail. He was quick to pounce on terrorist incidents in Paris and Brussels, as well as Orlando and San Bernardino, Calif., with tough vows, even if he was loose with his facts. 
 
 Last month, after a suicide bomber killed 22 others and injured scores more at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, Trump labeled terrorists “evil losers” and vowed to obliterate “this wicked ideology.” 
 
 Trump last week also prematurely called a deadly attack in a casino in the Philippines a “terrorist attack.” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte later said it was not the work of terrorists but a “crazy” gunman. 
 
 Trump’s response to this weekend’s London Bridge incident won praise Sunday morning from friend Nigel Farage, who as head of the UK Independence Party led last year’s Brexit movement, which Trump supported and saw as a precursor to his own election. 
 
 In an interview on Fox News Channel’s “Fox and Friends,” a show Trump is known to watch frequently, Farage sharply criticized Khan and May’s responses to the London attack as too timid and politically correct. He also lamented that the city had become, in his assessment, a safe harbor for Muslim “radicals.” 
 
 “We don’t just want speeches given outside 10 Downing Street,” Farage said. “We want genuine action. And if there’s not action, then the calls for internment will grow.” 
 
 Trump echoed Farage’s broad sentiment, assailing political correctness in the United States as well. “We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don’t get smart it will only get worse,” Trump said on Twitter. 
 
 Although Trump and May have a relationship that both countries describe as positive and productive, Trump has long tangled with Khan, a member of the Labour Party who was elected mayor last year, London’s first Muslim chief executive. 
 
 Khan has positioned himself as a moral and ideological foil to Trump. During last year’s U.S. presidential campaign, Trump proposed banning all Muslims from entering the United States, but suggested he would make an exception for London’s mayor. Khan responded by saying Trump had an “ignorant view of Islam.” 
 
 In January, Khan criticized Trump’s travel ban on people from seven majority-Muslim countries — it was later revised to six. The mayor called it “shameful and cruel,” saying that the policy “flies in the face of the values of freedom and tolerance.” 
 
 And just last week, Khan joined the chorus of foreign leaders denouncing Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the landmark Paris climate agreement. 
 
 After the London attack, Trump’s critics chastised him for continuing his feud with Khan. 
 
 “I don’t think that a major terrorist attack like this is the time to be divisive and to criticize a mayor who’s trying to organize his city’s response to this attack,” former vice president Al Gore said Sunday on CNN. “The terrorists want us to live in a state of constant fear.”
– President Trump's oldest son was slammed Wednesday for what was seen as a political attack on London's mayor within hours of a terrorist attack that left five people dead and dozens injured. "You have to be kidding me?!: Terror attacks are part of living in big city, says London Mayor Sadiq Khan," Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, linking to an Independent story from last September. Trump Jr. was accused of misrepresenting the mayor's remarks and exploiting the London attack, the BBC reports. Khan, speaking after a meeting with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio the day after three NYC-area bombings, had been talking about the need for big cities to stay vigilant and be prepared for terrorist attacks. "You have to be vigilant, you have to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you have to support the security services," Khan said in September. It's not clear whether Trump Jr. was aware that the article he linked to was from months ago and not the mayor's response to the attack, the Guardian notes. "You use a terrorist attack on our city to attack London’s Mayor for your own political gain. You’re a disgrace," tweeted MP Wes Streeting. CNN reports that the White House offered a more diplomatic response to the attack, with Trump tweeting that he had spoken to Prime Minister Theresa May to offer condolences, and Sean Spicer saying it would be "irresponsible" to jump to conclusions about the incident. (Secret Service agents may have taken a selfie with Donald Trump Jr.'s sleeping 8-year-old.)