Watch: Rock Star Catches Karoline Leavitt Off Guard with 'Very Good' Press Briefing Question

Grammy Award-winning British musician-turned-podcaster Winston Marshall raised a provocative question during an interview with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday: Would a future Trump administration consider offering political asylum to citizens of the United Kingdom, given what he described as a deteriorating climate for free expression there?

“In Britain, we have had over a quarter of a million people issued non-crime hate incidents. As we speak, there are people in prison for quite literally reposting memes. We have extensive prison sentences for tweets, social media posts, and general free speech issues,” said Marshall, who was a founding member of the folk rock band Mumford & Sons.

He followed up with: “Would the Trump administration consider political asylum for British citizens in such a situation?”

Leavitt responded by calling it a “very good one.”

“I have not heard that proposed to the president, nor have I spoken to him about that idea, but I certainly can talk to our national security team and see if it’s something the administration would entertain,” she replied.

Addressing the broader topic, Leavitt added, “To your first question about free speech in the United Kingdom, the vice president has been incredibly outspoken about this for good reason, and the president has spoken about this, as well, directly with your prime minister, when he was here for a visit to the White House.”

She emphasized the administration’s concern over the matter: “So it remains a critical endeavor of ours to show the Brits in your country, which we love and admire, about the First Amendment and the importance of free speech in a sovereign nation.”

Marshall’s question appears to stem from his own personal experiences. In 2021, he exited Mumford & Sons after facing intense backlash over a tweet supporting conservative journalist Andy Ngo’s book Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. The response, he wrote in a blog post, was swift and overwhelming.

“Over the course of 24 hours [my tweet] was trending with tens of thousands of angry retweets and comments. I failed to foresee that my commenting on a book critical of the Far-Left could be interpreted as approval of the equally abhorrent Far-Right.”

He concluded the post by announcing his departure from the band: “The only way forward for me is to leave the band. I hope in distancing myself from them I am able to speak my mind without them suffering the consequences.”

Marshall discussed his departure more recently on an episode of Bill Maher’s podcast.

As Leavitt mentioned, Vice President J.D. Vance has also expressed alarm over the state of speech rights in the U.K. While attending the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance specifically called out Britain’s increasing limits on speech.

“Perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs,” Vance said.

He pointed to the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a British Army veteran aged 51, who was arrested and convicted for what Vance described as “the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes — not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone.”

When questioned by officers about the nature of his prayer, Smith-Connor stated he was praying for his unborn son, who had been lost to abortion over two decades earlier, according to reporting from the BBC.

“Smith-Connor was handed a two-year conditional discharge and ordered to pay more than £9,000 costs,” the BBC reported.

Vance cited further concerns, noting, “I wish I could say that this was a fluke, a one-off crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called ‘safe access zones,’ warning them that even private prayer, within their own homes, may amount to breaking the law.”

“In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he concluded.

Both Marshall’s query and Vance’s remarks echoed a famous passage from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, written during the American Revolution: “Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her,” Paine wrote. “Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.”