Jubilant Trump hails British shake-up
US presidential candidate Donald Trump thrust himself into the heart of Britain’s vote to leave the EU on Friday, calling it a “great” development and drawing parallels to his own insurgent campaign.
In Scotland to reopen a golf resort he owns, he wasted no time interpreting the Brexit vote as an example of a global uprising against the established order. It’s an argument he said fit in with his own campaign to shake up Washington by renegotiating free trade deals and stopping illegal immigration.
“People want to take their country back. They want to have independence, in a sense. You see it with Europe, all over Europe,” Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, told a news conference at the Trump Turnberry golf course.
He said the economic shock from the vote would ebb over time and more European countries might want to break with the EU. Americans, he said, would have a chance “to redeclare their independence” and “reject today’s rule by the global elite” when they vote on November 8.
“So I think you’re going to have this happen more and more. I really believe that, and I think that it’s happening in the US. It’s happening by the fact that I’ve done so well in the polls,” he said.
Trump’s rival, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, said: “This time of uncertainty only underscores the need for calm, steady, experienced leadership in the White House to protect Americans’ pocketbooks and livelihoods, to support our friends and allies, to stand up to our adversaries, and to defend our interests.”
Clinton had openly favoured the campaign to keep Britain in the EU.
Trump assailed as inappropriate US President Barack Obama’s appeals to Britain not to split off. Shaking off a tradition of not commenting on US politics from foreign soil, Trump said Obama had been embarrassed. “It’s something he shouldn’t have done. It’s not his country. It’s not his part of the world. He shouldn’t have done it. And I actually think that his recommendation perhaps caused it to fail,” he said.
“I think David Cameron is a good man. He was wrong on this,” Trump said, predicting Britain and the US would remain “great allies”. —
You’re going to have this more and more . . . It’s happening in the US