Trump Says He May Meet Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage in U.K.

(Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said he might meet with Boris Johnson, the pro-Brexit front-runner to replace Theresa May as prime minister, when he visits the U.K. next week.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump said he also could sit down with Nigel Farage, whose Brexit Party won 30.8% of the U.K. vote in last week’s European Parliamentary elections.

The last time Trump visited the U.K., in July 2018, he embarrassed May by saying Johnson would make a great prime minister shortly after Johnson quit as foreign secretary in protest against the prime ministers’s Brexit deal.

Farage has been an ally of Trump since before the U.S. president took office, joining him on the 2016 campaign trail.

The then-U.K. Independence Party leader then stole a march on May by becoming the first U.K. politician to speak to the president-elect, in New York, after the vote. In a sign of the rocky relationship with May that would follow, Trump suggested in a Twitter post that Farage should be the U.K’s ambassador to the US, despite him being from a rival party to the premier’s Conservatives.

--With assistance from Alex Morales.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net;Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Alex Morales, Kathleen Hunter

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