BY ADAM TAYLOR

Trump’s Charlottesville response puts his foreign friends in an awkward position

President Trump’s defiant and seemingly sympathetic reaction to far-right violence during protests in Charlottesville last weekend has left his domestic allies scrambling. But don’t forget the foreign leaders who count Trump as an ally: Some had tried to overlook the president’s remarkable global unpopularity in the interest of shoring up strategic partnerships with the United States — and now find themselves tarred by association.

Case in point? Theresa May. The British prime minister rushed to Washington to meet the newly elected Trump in January. The pair sought to give the impression that, at a time when Britain and the United States were looking isolated among their Western allies, the “special relationship” was still strong. A photo of the two awkwardly holding hands as they toured the White House soon went viral.

Things haven’t gone well for May since then. The prime minister called a snap election for June, thinking she was all but guaranteed to boost her parliamentary majority. Instead, she only narrowly avoided a historically disastrous defeat. Much of the blame lies with May herself, a wooden politician who seems out of touch with the nation, but her association with Trump also seems to have jinxed her. The U.S. president was never popular in Britain, and his attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan after terrorist attacks in the capital made him positively toxic.

And now, just when it looked like Trump’s reputation couldn’t sink lower in Britain, Charlottesville happened.

Trump’s apparent sympathy for far-right protesters — who included neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and members of “alt-right” groups — played horribly in a country that still reveres the sacrifices made during World War II. Even among adamant right-wing “Brexiteers,” perhaps Britain’s most pro-Trump group, there is a unshakable pride in Britain’s role in defeating Nazi Germany. Paul Mason, a left-leaning journalist, summed up the feelings of many Britons when he directly addressed May on Twitter: “if you don’t condemn Trump’s support for white supremacists NOW why did our fathers fight [World War II]?”

On Wednesday, May told reporters that she saw “no equivalence between those who propound fascist views and those who oppose them,” but did not mention Trump by name. Critics, including many in her own party, concluded that it was too weak a statement — especially as May was spending a considerable amount of time condemning a decision to temporarily silence Big Ben, the giant clock in London’s Houses of Parliament, which is undergoing renovations.

For all her faults, May is not a far-right sympathizer. But she made the fateful decision to tie her leadership to Trump and his “America First” vision and seems to be too cautious now to criticize her ally.Other European leaders had been more circumspect: France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel courted Trump when needed but have also undermined Washington at other points.

Whoever leads Britain after May will almost certainly be a loud critic of Trump. Her popular Labour rival, Jeremy Corbyn, has frequently attacked Trump, as has Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable. “Donald Trump should unequivocally condemn those who want to reverse the achievements of the civil rights movement and take us back to the days of Jim Crow,” said Corbyn to reporters on Wednesday. Members of May’s own Conservative part like Sajid Javid, a member of parliament have made their own thoughts clear as well.

May isn’t the only one in a bind. Across the world, it’s become increasingly clear that allying yourself with Trump presents a political liability. As The Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker, James McAuley and Rick Noack noted on Wednesday, even those on Europe’s far right struggled to reconcile Trump’s comments with their own drive for mainstream legitimacy. “They don’t want to be tarnished by every scandal or misstep that rocks the Trump presidency,” said Thomas Greven, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin to my colleagues.

The Trump toxicity can work the other way, too. After the president made military threats against Venezuela last week, other Latin American leaders — even ones who enjoy close and friendly relationships with Washington — were united in condemning Trump, the New York Times noted Wednesday. “The possibility of a military intervention shouldn’t even be considered,” said Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia’s president. Venezuela’s pariah president, Nicolás Maduro, also used Trump’s threat to rally his flagging support at home.

Vice President Pence is now touring the region as Trump’s “global translator” in a bid to soothe these relationships, The Post’s Philip Rucker reported — though Pence announced on Wednesday he was returning to Washington a day early amid this week’s furor.

Of course, there are still a number of world leaders Trump can count on as allies, although many are despots and autocrats. One of the few democratic leaders who has stuck by Trump is Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, but his reaction to events in Charlottesville has been muted despite the anti-Semitism on display. The Israeli prime minister took several days to offer a milquetoast condemnation of “anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism,” although his 26-year-old son wrote on Facebook that he was more worried about left-wing violence than threats from the right.

As Today’s WorldView noted yesterday, most of Trump’s foreign policy is not radical. He has not followed through on the suggestions of true isolationism he made on the campaign trail, and his threats to the United States’ alliances remain unfulfilled for now. But own-goals like the one we’ve seen Trump spectacularly score this week are only making him more isolated on the world stage.

Why? Just ask Britain’s May. Allies may fear Trump’s wrath, but his embrace seems far more politically damaging.