Donald Trump has confirmed that he likes the UK’s new prime minister, even though she faces rebellion from her own party and has slumped in opinion polls.
Just one month into her new job at No.10 Downing Street, Liz Truss is facing deep splits within the Conservative Party over her economic policy and Labour have a 33-point lead in the approval ratings among the public.
When asked what advice he would give to Truss to help her deal with the asylum seekers crossing the English Channel, Trump was quick to praise the struggling PM – although, bizarrely, he only spoke about her economic policy.
He told GB News: “I like some of the things she’s done, and she seems very nice, very good.
“I like some of the things – you know, it’s inverse. A lot of the time, finance is inverse. I cut taxes very substantially, and we did much more business and she’s done that.
“I know she’s taken some hits for it actually, which surprises me, but it could be at the end of the day, you do bigger revenues. It’s going to be very interesting.”
Truss’ decision (made alongside her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng) to benefit the country’s wealthiest through £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts stunned the international markets in September.
She has since agreed to drop the 45p tax cut rate for the highest earners earlier this week, in a screeching U-turn. This may have restored the value of the pound, but crushed her credibility among Tory MPs.
Still, Trump continued to defend her.
He said just because Truss’ actions were “inverse” to what people expected, doesn’t mean she isn’t right. He added: “I have a feeling she might be right.”
“I think very highly of her, she had a great send-off from the Queen, that was the last one of the Queen’s send-offs, so that was a big deal, right?”
The late monarch invited Truss to form a government just two days before she died.
However, Trump seemed less certain about Truss’ predecessor, Boris Johnson, who he had previously dubbed “Britain Trump”.
“I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but Boris was a friend. And I think the biggest problem Boris has was he went liberal all of a sudden, he went to the other side.”
Truss was originally seen as the “continuity candidate” to Johnson’s time in office, but just a month in, she has dropped many of his policies and steered the government in a different direction – and clearly, in a way Trump liked.
The former president also said Johnson had “changed” and seemed to support “windmills all over the place”, presumably a reference to his backing of wind turbines.
“He went for, you know, he went a little bit woke-ier than I believe he really is,” Trump continued. “He was a conservative guy and he became much less than conservative. And I think a lot of people didn’t like it. They didn’t like it.”
