SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Trump inflamed George Floyd row to ‘distract from Covid’, Lammy claimed.

[UK Labour foreign secretary] David Lammy accused Donald Trump of inflaming tensions following the death of George Floyd to distract from Covid, The Telegraph can reveal.

Speaking to Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, on a podcast in 2020, David Lammy – then the shadow secretary of state for justice – accused Trump of attempting to “stoke the fire” of Black Lives Matter protests and marches both in support of and against the police.

The protests were sparked after Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, knelt on 46-year-old Mr Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes on a street in Minneapolis despite the dying man’s pleas.

Asked by Lord Hermer why the world had woken up to “systemic racism”, Mr Lammy pointed to two factors “that lay on top of where we are”.

“One is Donald Trump, and Donald Trump’s attempts, frankly, to stoke the fire.”

Mr Lammy said: “Donald Trump is a populist nationalist leader, and frankly, politically, I think it’s very, very clear that he would actually prefer the headlines in the United States not to be about the Coronavirus, which I think worldwide opinion is he’s dealt with incredibly badly.

Trump was initially furious when red states such as Georgia began to open up in late April of 2020. In sharp contrast, the American medical profession declared Coronavirus all but over at the beginning of June: