U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his gratitude to the support he received from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday night, both men now having contracted and recovered from coronavirus.
Donald Trump revealed he had had a conversation with Boris Johnson on Wednesday, days after he returned to the White House from the Walter Reed military hospital, where he was treated after testing positive for coronavirus.
The President responded in kind to a message sent across the Atlantic when Prime Minister Johnson wished Trump a speedy recovery, writing: “Very thankful for his friendship and support as I recovered from the China Virus. I am looking forward to working with him for many years to come, a great guy!”
President Trump and the First Lady tested positive for coronavirus in the early hours of Friday morning. While the pair initially went into quarantine together, the President was subsequently transferred to the Walter Reed hospital. He left the facility on Monday and was seen pumping his fist and giving a thumbs-up in a sign of victory before being driven away.
Boris Johnson also tested positive for coronavirus this year. While he, too, initially self-isolated at his official residence, Johnson was later transferred to hospital within days of his initial diagnosis. He was subsequently moved to intensive care before being discharged to recuperate at the prime minister’s official country residence, Chequers.
While the President has made a big show over his relationship with Prime Minister Johnson — as he did with former British Prime Minister Theresa May — it is less clear to what degree the men actually agree on fundamental matters of politics.
Despite the initial frequent references to Johnson as the “British Trump“, the comparison does not stand, with the prime minister to the left of the President on many key issues. Perhaps most obvious of these are differing attitudes to mass migration, with Boris a long-term devotee of illegal migrant amnesties and open borders.
Indeed, Johnson’s record in power has underlined the commitments and comments made years before, as he has pushed ahead with a new post-Brexit immigration system which, critics point out, would see arrivals actually rise as the government slashes the requirements needed for legal immigration at a time where domestic workers need protecting.
It is not unclear what Boris Johnson himself thinks about Donald Trump, either. In 2015 while Mayor of London, Mr Johnson called then-Republican nomination contender Trump “out of his mind” and that he possessed “stupefying ignorance”. Johnson concluded by saying Trump was “playing the game of the terrorists” and was unfit to be the President.
While President Trump may have forgotten Johnson’s comments, Britain’s Brexit leader Nigel Farage certainly has not. Speaking to UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph this week, he observed: “Boris was very rude about him… But then, Boris is great at playing the PC game. Look, Boris turns on a sixpence on all sorts of things. All I can say is, that Trump liked Boris’s energy. He liked Boris’s optimism… I think he thought that Boris would deliver Brexit, because he’d have no choice.”