LONDON — Donald Trump learned “a lot” from Nigel Farage before deciding to run for U.S. president.
At least, that’s how Nigel Farage sees it.
The leading Brexiteer claimed in an interview that Trump saw Farage’s own long career as a rabble-rouser in the European Parliament as a model when he decided to run for the White House.
“He’s learned quite a lot from me,” Farage said in an interview with ITV. “I think it goes both ways.”
And Farage claimed of Trump: “He was watching my speeches in the European Parliament for many years before he decided to run.”
Asked whether Trump had explicitly told him this, Farage said: “I know that to be true.”
Farage — who is running for parliament in the U.K.’s general election and hopes to challenge the governing Tories from the right as leader of Reform UK — did a long and controversial stint in Brussels.
He served as an MEP between 1999 and 2020, when Britain quit the bloc. He used the parliament as a platform for punchy speeches promoting his Eurosceptic views, which often racked up huge viewership on YouTube and riled up parts of the Brussels bubble.
Farage and Trump go way back too. The Reform UK leader was the first British politician to meet Trump after the latter’s U.S. election victory in 2016 and has interviewed him on numerous occasions. Farage flirted with heading to the U.S. to campaign for Trump’s presidential re-election bid this year, but is instead focusing on U.K. politics.
Speaking to ITV, Reform’s leader — who has spoken of his desire to replace the Tories as a new force on the right — denied he’s Britain’s version of Trump.
“I think we’re very different,” he said. “I think we think the same on many things.”
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