Trump took to his Truth Social site Sunday to single out Johnson for praise.
Donald Trump gave Boris Johnson the thumbs-up after the former U.K. prime minister dismissed Trump’s criminal conviction as “a machine-gun mob-style hit job.”
Trump took to his Truth Social site Sunday to single out Johnson for praise as he approvingly shared extracts of an op-ed in which Johnson tore into the “liberal elites” and brushed aside Trump’s conviction on 34 felony charges.
A Manhattan jury last week found the Republican presidential contender guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a conspiracy to undermine the 2016 presidential election. Sentencing is set for July 11.
But Johnson, who was ousted from office in 2022 by his own party after a string of scandals, said the American people had already concluded that the case was “by and large, a load of stunted-up old nonsense.”
“The vast mass of American voters could see what I believe was really happening: that the liberal elites were just appalled at Trump’s continuing popularity and his ability to connect with voters — and they were using anything they could find to derail his campaign,” Johnson wrote in the Daily Mail.
Johnson added: “If you look dispassionately at his time in office, both on the domestic and international front, it was far more successful than his Left-wing critics allow. They should not be using legal tricks like this to prevent him from receiving the judgment that really matters — the verdict of the people.”
Trump’s opponents had, Johnson argued, only “helped to make his victory more likely, not less” in November’s U.S. presidential election.
“Thank you to Boris Johnson!” Trump posted Sunday night, as he shared chunks of the Johnson op-ed on his social network.
Long history
Other senior British politicians have studiously avoided making remarks on Trump’s historic conviction.
When asked if he would be willing to work with a convicted felon, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told the BBC on Friday: “You wouldn’t expect me to comment on another country’s domestic politics or judicial processes.”
Labour Leader Keir Starmer — pushing to become prime minister in a July 4 U.K. general election — said only that his party would work with whoever wins power in the U.S. in November.
Trump and Johnson go way back. As U.S. president, Trump once praised Johnson — a key face in the Brexit campaign — as “Britain Trump.”
Johnson has met with Trump since the pair left office to try to convince him to back support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s invasion.
But Trump gave a mixed verdict of Johnson’s time in office in a 2022 interview, saying that his “friend” suffered because he “went liberal all of a sudden, he went to the other side.”
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