Boris Johnson, the former British foreign secretary and London mayor, branded Donald Trump “clearly out of his mind” and “unfit to hold the office of President of the United States” before his election.
The Tory MP, who hopes to succeed Theresa May as Tory leader — and, therefore, be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom — has appeared to court the American leader since his election, and is apparently being considered for a meeting with him during his impending state visit.
But, despite sometimes being likened to a “British Trump” for his bombastic, larger than life persona, the notoriously changeable politician — who was a key figure in the Brexit campaign but infamously penned two draft announcements, one declaring his support for Leave and one declaring his support for Remain, before finally deciding who to back fairly late in the referendum — has not always been a fan of his supposed counterpart.
In December 2015, when Mr Trump was still competing for the Republican nomination against the likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Johnson — then Mayor of London — excoriated the American as “clearly out of his mind” for proposing a temporary halt on Islamic immigration in the wake of mass casualty terror attacks in Europe and San Bernardino, California.
Johnson also took the president to task for comments suggesting no-go areas were emerging in Britain’s hyper-diverse multicultural capital, flatly denying it and accusing Trump of “stupefying ignorance”.
“When Donald Trump says that there are parts of London that are no-go areas, I think he’s betraying a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of President of the United States,” he declared.
“I would invite him to come and see the whole of London and take him round the city except that I wouldn’t want to expose Londoners to any unnecessary risk of meeting Donald Trump,” he sneered.
While Johnson rapidly cooled down and even somewhat reversed his rhetoric as ‘President Donald Trump’ became an increasingly likely prospect and, ultimately, a reality — going so far as to suggest he wished Mr Trump was negotiating Brexit — he continued to ding the U.S. leader in somewhat more measured terms during his brief tenure as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary.
When the President introduced a fairly limited travel ban — not on Muslims in general, but on nationals of certain countries identified as having poor national security infrastructure and/or hosting jihadist hotbeds by the previous Obama administration — the Tory Johnson denounced the policy in the House of Commons, branding it “divisive… discriminatory and wrong”.
While the Vote Leave campaign which he fronted adopted a pro-borders stance on immigration, which is greatly exacerbated by Britain’s EU membership, Johnson is no migration hawk himself, earning the nickname “Amnesty Boris” in some circles for his push to give legal status to illegal aliens who have been at large in Britain for ten years — regularising the presence of possibly millions of migrants.
He has also been a strong supporter of allowing Turkey to join the European Union — which would ultimately open much of the continent to effectively uncontrolled immigration from a population of 90 million based largely in Asia, under the bloc’s Free Movement migration regime.
Johnson’s Brexit credentials have taken a knock after he voted for Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement bill on the third time of it being presented to Parliament, despite having previously rejected identical legislation on the grounds of it reducing the United Kingdom to the state of a vassal colony beneath the European Union. This abrupt change of position led Brexit leader Nigel Farage to suggest last week that it would be difficult for Brexiteers to trust Mr Johnson or his colleagues in future.
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