The government has done its best to keep President Trump away from the public during his two-day trip here, lest protests sour the good mood that pageantry and parades have put him in. However, it didn’t plan for the determination of activist prank groups. When a picture of Trump standing with the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein was projected onto the walls of Windsor Castle last night, it was deemed to be enough to tip the balance into unlawfulness. The veracity of the image is not contested, and no crime of trespass has been alleged.
Police nevertheless say that four people were arrested on the grounds of “malicious communication”, where the intent is to cause distress to the recipient. One wonders what “Teflon Don”, the man his admirers suppose to be so hard to ruffle, who was hailed by a scattering of adoring fans outside Windsor Castle as the “free speech king”, makes of these arrests in the wake of his arrival – or, more crucially, how it would sit with his base.
