Donald Trump is currently visiting Scotland and has granted the only interview of his trip to former Ukip and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage.
The one-on-one exchange will air live on GB News at 7pm on Wednesday evening as part of Mr Farage’s regular programme and will be viewable on the channel, its website and via the broadcaster’s YouTube channel.
Mr Trump, who is planning to run again for the US presidency in 2024, has recently been dogged by legal entanglements relating to his business practices, apparent attempts to interfere in 2020 vote counting in Georgia and a historic allegation of sexual assault.
Stepping away momentarily to visit his golf courses in Aberdeenshire and Ayrshire before jetting down to Ireland, Mr Trump will be reunited with his fellow right-wing populist, whom he can be seen greeting in a brief trailer tweeted out by the channel.
In the clip, he tells his entourage: “Everyone know Nigel? We’re doing a little minor interview tomorrow.”
Speaking to the GB News website, Mr Farage said: “We’ll talk about the president’s view on the state of Scotland; the royal family ahead of the coronation; his personal legal issues in the United States; his take on British politics, especially on Rishi Sunak’s leadership so far, and of course his future political plans.”
He continued: “I first met Mr Trump in 2014 and became firm friends in 2016 when I joined him on his successful presidential campaign trail.
“The political elite underestimated him back then, so we’ll discuss how he plans to win back the White House.”
Mr Trump and Mr Farage have been publicly slapping each other on the back since at least summer 2016 and the aftermath of the latter’s Brexit “triumph”.
During that year’s presidential campaign, Mr Farage crossed the Atlantic to stump for Mr Trump in Jackson, Mississippi, telling a lively crowd (not all of whom appeared to know who he was) that he had “smashed the establishment” in pushing for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and that the Republican could do the same by beating Hillary Clinton at the polls.
A month before the election, when the notorious Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Mr Trump could be seen bragging about groping women, making a remark that would have ended almost anyone else’s political career, Mr Farage defended him by saying that while the comments were “ugly” they did not amount to much more than “alpha male boasting”.
“It’s the kind of thing, if we are being honest, that men do. They sit around and have a drink and they talk like this,” he said.
“By the way, quite a lot of women say things amongst themselves that they would not want to see on Fox News, or the front page of a newspaper.”
Mr Farage was rewarded for his loyalty by being invited to Trump Tower in Manhattan shortly after Mr Trump’s victory in November, posing for the famous golden elevator photograph alongside fellow Leavers Arron Banks, Raheem Kassam, Andy Wigmore and Gerry Gunster, a group that laughably referred to themselves as “the Brex Pistols”.
Just as Mr Trump had once branded himself “Mr Brexit”, Mr Farage was soon taking credit for the American’s election upset, saying he had been the “inspiration” for the MAGA campaign.
While working for LBC radio in October 2019, Mr Farage secured a phone interview with President Trump in which the latter warned that then-prime minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal could jeopardise the prospects of the UK securing a lucrative trade deal with the US.
The pair were back together in person in the Covid era when Mr Farage again spoke up for Mr Trump on the rally stage ahead of the 2020 election, this time in Phoenix, Arizona, where he was, somewhat dubiously, introduced as “one of Europe’s most powerful men” and repaid the compliment by telling his audience Mr Trump was “the single most resilient and bravest person I have ever met in my life”.
Less successfully, Mr Farage secured another interview with the deposed commander-in-chief on GB News in December 2021 in which he opened by suggesting that Mr Trump had been silenced in the wake of the Capitol riot and had “disappeared” from the headlines, a notion his interviewee was none too pleased by.
“Well, I didn’t know I was so quiet, but if you say so, that’s OK with me,” the former president said, somewhat huffily.
