“I heard there were protests,” Trump said during a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday. “I said, ‘Where are the protests?’ I don’t see any protests. I did see a small protest today when I came — very small. So a lot of it is fake news, I hate to say.”

Trump’s efforts to minimize opposition to his presidency on the first stop of a week-long tour of three European nations represented his latest attempt to misrepresent his public standing and rewrite perceptions about the popularity of his agenda — an effort that began on his first week in office, when a White House spokesman argued, against evidence, that the president had the largest inauguration crowd in history.

The president’s claims in London were just as easily proved false. After the news conference, CNN aired footage of the demonstrators, including a giant Trump robot sitting on a toilet and repeating two of his catchphrases: “Fake news” and “witch hunt.” On social media, photos circulated of protesters holding signs reading “Trump climate disaster,” “Don’t attack Iran” and “Trump, you are a mind-bending [expletive] human being.”