The man that President-elect Donald Trump has said he would like to see as London’s ambassador to the U.S. may actually be coming to America’s shores as an immigrant.
A longtime champion of Brexit — the British withdrawal from the European Union that U.K. voters authorized in June — Nigel Farage reportedly told the Times of London he feels drawn to the U.S., where he says he would be “freer” than in his native Britain.
Mr. Farage is expected to visit the Trump transition team in early December, the London Daily Telegraph reported Wednesday. He already met with President-elect Trump shortly after the election, complete with an Trump Tower elevator photo-op that quickly became a political meme.
“Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!” tweeted Mr. Trump on Nov. 21, ruffling the feathers of Trump critics on both sides of the Atlantic and prompting a brief polite response by the British government denying any such appointment was in the cards.
“We have an excellent ambassador to the United States [Sir Kim Darroch] and he will continue in his work,” the British government said, reported the Financial Times on Nov. 22. “We appoint our ambassadors.”
Mr. Farage has said he would be open to being appointed by Mr. Trump as an ambassador to the European Union, The Hill reported Thursday.
As a member of the Brussels-based European Parliament, Mr. Farage has often used his floor speeches to assail the European Union, perhaps most notably during an emergency session convened in June shortly after Brexit’s approval.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump often alluded to the Brexit shocker as a harbinger of a similar rebuke to the U.S. political and media establishments coming in the presidential election, and at one point even featured Mr. Farage as a speaker at an August campaign rally.
“The media is unrelenting. They will only go with and report a story in a negative light. I called Brexit (Hillary was wrong), watch November,” Mr. Trump predicted in a June 27 tweet.
“They will soon be calling me MR. BREXIT!” he tweeted on Aug. 18.
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