Gov. Phil Bryant addresses media following Donald Trump's presidential election. Credit: Adam Ganucheau, Mississippi Today

Gov. Phil Bryant, in London this week, boosted President Donald Trump on Brexit co-leader Nigel Farage’s radio show.

Bryant, who paired Farage and Trump for the first time in Mississippi in 2016, defended the president’s policies and diplomatic outreach on the air Monday.

“What a lot of people don’t realize is what’s happening on an international level as you see him travel,” Bryant said. “I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, I’ve been to UAE, I met with a crown prince there in Saudi Arabia. They love Donald Trump. They know Donald Trump represents a strong, determined leader for the west. They haven’t seen that in a while.

“I think Europe’s going to have to adjust to the fact that Donald J. Trump is going to be president for this term and hopefully another one, and he wants to work together,” the governor said.

Bryant, a surrogate of Trump’s during the 2016 presidential election, has been a vocal supporter since the president’s election. He has traveled regularly to the nation’s capital since last year’s presidential election, visiting with cabinet members and Trump himself. He has been quoted by national newspapers supporting the president’s policies and has gone on Farage’s radio show before to tout the president’s accomplishments.

Farage this week asked Bryant if he thought Trump feels offended not yet receiving an invitation to Great Britain. Bryant replied, “I think he does. He would not say it because he’s a gentleman.”

Farage then remarked that the hesitation might be the potential for protests.

“You know this president is not scared,” Bryant said. “It doesn’t bother him at all. I think probably what he is concerned about is how that would affect your city of London. I’ve told him, go outside London. You don’t have to be in London. There’s other wonderful places in Great Britain that you would have, I think, really supporting crowds.”

Bryant continued: “It’d be like going to New York or Los Angeles or another one of our big cities where the liberals are in charge, and a lot of times you see a decaying infrastructure, a big crime problem, homelessness in these big cities that Democrats have used that social engineering program to cause that. So I hope he certainly comes here. I think it would be a great day for Great Britain, particularly outside of London.”

Farage asked Bryant about Trump’s inability to pass his key legislation, namely a repeal and replace of the Affordable Care Act, and infighting among Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The Republican governor likened Democratic and establishment GOP lawmakers to “imperial powers.”

“You have a lot of Democrats in very powerful positions in the House and Senate, and you have Republicans who are so nervous about this great change away from the establishment,” Bryant said. “They all had great parking places and big offices and lots of money.

“And in came a businessman who said we’re going to stop all that,” Bryant continued. “We’re going to start worrying about the people of the United States, the men and women in the middle class that need our help and we’ve not seen real economic growth in the last eight, maybe 10 years. He came in like a whirlwind.”

Bryant also used the moment to tout accomplishments back home in Mississippi, like the state seeing its lowest-ever unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, and the progressive Royal Commonwealth Society opening an office in Jackson.

“I remind people we used to have this course in college called Western Civilization,” Bryant said. “We studied the great things that the English speaking people in western civilizations had and some of the challenges we had — it was not perfect. I think there’s a movement of another great western civilization. This should be our decade for Great Britain and America to help lead the world.”

Click here to watch Bryant’s full interview with Farage.

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Adam Ganucheau, as Mississippi Today's editor-in-chief, oversees the newsroom and works with the editorial team to fulfill our mission of producing high-quality journalism in the public interest. Adam has covered politics and state government for Mississippi Today since February 2016. A native of Hazlehurst, Adam has worked as a staff reporter for AL.com, The Birmingham News and The Clarion-Ledger and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Adam earned his bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Mississippi.

2 replies on “Gov. Bryant returns to Nigel Farage radio show in London to boost Trump”

  1. OMG, this is why we are last in the nation. We have some of the stupidest leaders. Saudi Arabia harbors terrorists, and we are giving them weapons. Anyone who thinks Trump isn’t getting kick backs from all he does is seriously demented.

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