Nigel Farage dined out with US president Donald Trump and some of his senior advisers on Saturday, just days after addressing American conservatives at a conference.
The former Ukip leader sat down for dinner with the billionaire businessman at one of the president’s own luxury hotels, the Trump International Hotel, not far from the White House.
Farage posted on Twitter a photograph, captioned “Dinner with the Donald”, of himself grinning at a table with the president, his daughter Ivanka, her senior White House adviser husband Jared Kushner, and Florida governor Rick Scott.
But it actually sounds like the dinner may have not been quite as chummy as this makes out.
According to an eyewitness, the MEP wasn’t actually invited:
While other rather odd details were also pointed out on social media:
Earlier Farage appeared to back the president’s aggressive dismissals of the media, telling American broadcaster Fox’s Business Network programme they are “losing this battle big time”, the Press Association reported.
He said: “They are simply not prepared to accept that Brexit happened, that Trump happened.
“They kind of want to turn the clock back and what they don’t realise is they are losing viewers, they are losing listeners, they are losing this battle big time.
“I am pleased that the president is not afraid to stand up to them.”
Earlier in the week, Farage told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the UK’s decision to leave the European Union had set in motion a movement that will sweep the world.
He said: “What happened in 2016 is the beginning of a great global revolution”, and predicted similar results to the Brexit decision in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
Trump continued his unrelenting attack on the media on Saturday when he announced he would snub the White House press corp and not attend the annual correspondents’ dinner, which is traditionally addressed by US presidents.
It came after he barred news organisations, including the BBC, Guardian and Daily Mail from a White House press briefing, denouncing them as “fake news”.