Daniel Hannan, a Conservative Party Member of the European Parliament currently touring Washington, D.C., appears to be running from his record opposing Donald J. Trump since the new President’s inauguration. Hannan has deleted many disparaging tweets about the President. He formerly supported the election of President Barack Obama.
A career politician, Hannan conceded recently that he “said some hard things about President Trump during the primaries”, but appears to have struck a more conciliatory tone since the inauguration in an attempt to find relevance in a post-election world.
After combing through a collection of deleted tweets on the Politwoops website, Breitbart London has discovered the MEP has attempted to cover up some of the nastiest things he said about the Republican leader and his campaign.
For example, when asked if he had rowed back from his assessment of President Trump as a “self-absorbed, foul-mouthed, thin-skinned, bullying, mendacious, meretricious, mountainous berk” since the election, Hannan initially replied, “Nope. My view of Trump is unaltered. I keep hoping that he’ll prove me wrong; but no joy so far.”
He deleted the response 20 days ago.
Election tweets in which he urged the then-candidate to “Just go, go, go I don’t care how. You can go by foot You can go by cow Donald J Trump will you please go now!” and “Nothing has happened all year to change my view that Trump is the one Republican whom even Hillary will beat,” have also been removed.
Elsewhere, Hannan states: “If I were Mexico, I’d be glad to pay for a wall to keep Trump out.”
He also claims: “It’s an odd thing, but Trump is turning me into an aggressive feminist.”
Perhaps most interestingly, the MEP seems to have taken care to remove several tweets in which he advances a conspiracy theory that President Trump would be impeached within six weeks of his inauguration if elected.
“A job worth having for once, given the likelihood that Trump would be impeached within about six weeks,” he tweeted, referring to the vice-presidency.
“I can see one argument – one – for backing Trump. He’ll be impeached within months, allowing the patriotic @mike_pence to become president,” he wrote in another.
However, not all of the Hannan’s anti-Trump tweets have been scrubbed successfully; this one alleging men should be “uncomfortable” with him given the way he allegedly talks “about our mothers & daughters” is still present on the website.
Others, stating Trump is “no Mr Brexit” and suggesting he will prove unreliable on immigration, have also escaped deletion.
Hannan is considered something of an oracle by the so-called “eurosceptic aristocracy” within the Tory party, concerned primarily with financial deregulation, neoliberal free trade, and abstract principles that have more in common with the Liberal Democrat Party than conservatism.
However, the 45-year-old is also a staunch supporter of Turkey and its potential membership of the European Union (EU), opposed to protecting jobs – valuing the “dispersed gains” of free trade over those who suffer its “concentrated losses” – and relaxed about mass immigration. He even suggested a form of “free movement of labour” could continue after Brexit.
This has led other Brexit campaigners, such as long-time Nigel Farage lieutenant Gawain Towler, to describe Hannan as “an idiot savant … so locked up in his world that he can’t see what is on the end of his well-formed aquiline nose”, insensible to the issues which resonate most with ordinary people.
Consequently, Hannan was not enamoured with President Trump’s campaign, which took a robust stance on immigration and emphasised “fair trade, not free trade” and did not shy away from considering tariffs as a means of preventing other countries from undercutting American workers.
Hannan backed Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz for the Republican nomination in August 2016, thanking Iowans for placing Cruz ahead of the future president and dismissing him as “a narcissistic oaf”.
Mr. Hannan did not respond to a request for comment when approached by Breitbart London.
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