At least one person likes Liz Truss’ tax-cutting agenda. Unfortunately for her, it’s Donald Trump.
The controversial former U.S. president weighed into the debate over the new British Prime Minister’s ill-fated fiscal plan Tuesday, telling GB News that Truss is a “very good” politician and predicting she would prove her critics wrong on taxes.
“I cut taxes very substantially and we did much more business, and she’s done that,” Trump said of Truss. “And I know she’s taken some hits for it, which surprises me actually, but it could be at the end of the day you do bigger revenues. It’s going to be very interesting.”
Truss was this week forced to backtrack on her plan to ramp up government borrowing to fund tax cuts for the U.K.’s highest earners. In the wake of her so-called mini-budget, the pound dropped to its lowest level against the U.S. dollar, before recovering, while mortgage rates soared. The Conservatives’ poll ratings also slid dramatically as the opposition Labour Party gained momentum.
But Trump — whose administration oversaw its own major shake-up of personal and business taxes — said of the plan: “What she did is very inverse to what some people thought. But that doesn’t mean they were right. I have a feeling she might be right.”
Trump also said Truss seemed “very nice, very good,” and claimed she had received “a great send-off from the queen,” who died two days after appointing Truss as PM.
But he gave a mixed verdict on Truss’ predecessor, Boris Johnson, who was ousted from the job by his own colleagues after a string of scandals, including receiving a police fine for attending a government party during lockdown restrictions.
Asked about the former PM, Trump said: “I haven’t spoken to him in a while, but Boris was a friend. And I think the biggest problem Boris has was he went liberal all of a sudden, he went to the other side.”
Johnson, he argued, “changed and he went, you know, for the windmills all over the place” — an apparent attack on Johnson’s support for offshore wind. “He went for, you know, he went a little bit woke-ier than I believe he really is,” Trump added.
And while Trump described Johnson as “a good guy,” he also mused: “He was a conservative guy and he became much less than conservative. And I think a lot of people didn’t like it. They didn’t like it.”
