Nigel Farage is three large gin and tonics in, and there is as yet no sign that dinner is imminent. And he has just announced that he has a midnight hit on Fox News.
“It makes no difference. I have the five-pint rule,” he says, glass in hand. “Up to five for live telly.”
Then he explodes into the sort of throaty guffaws that mark out a man who expects a decent bottle of claret with dinner, and a cigarette on the sidewalk between courses.
Britain’s most famous Brexiteer is in a good mood as surveys the comings and goings in the chandeliered lobby of the Trump Hotel. As well he might. His political star is on the rise once again. He met President Trump earlier in the day, his new Brexit Party could help decide the next general election, and the arrival of Boris Johnson as British prime minister could put Farage at the heart of a populist, nationalist transatlantic alliance.
That is, if he can survive a comical misstep. When Trump paused a rambunctious July 23 speech to young supporters to deliver a shout-out to his buddy, Farage, who was MIA.
“Where’s Nigel?” said the president, shielding his eyes from the lights and trying to pick out the Brit in the audience. Hundreds of necks craned for a glimpse.
“He’s here some place. I saw him,” said a mystified Trump before carrying on.
Farage missed his moment by two minutes. He had left early to race across town to begin his live radio show.
“I feel cringe-makingly embarrassed by it,” he says.
Then it happens. A young man with impeccable manners sidles up for a quiet word. “I just wanted to say hello and congratulate you,” he says.
More young men follow. They are dressed in dark suits and red ties for Turning Point USA’s Liberty Gala, where seats cost $750 and Farage will be the after-dinner entertainment. As well as the pre-dinner entertainment for a string of older women, all blond and wrapped in tight red dresses, eager to grab a selfie with the hero of Brexit.
Judge Jeanine Pirro hovers nearby in a white trouser suit.
If the bar of the Trump International Hotel is the Trumpiest place in Trump’s Washington on any given day — where a 30-foot American flag, TVs tuned to Fox and near ubiquitous presence of Eric Bolling deter liberals and create a safe space for a particular species of conservative — then tonight it is at its most MAGA.
A man with a clear complexion, dressed in a light blue suit, is the next to appear at Farage’s right hand. “We’re just upstairs, come and join us,” he says in the most polished of English accents.
This is George Farmer, the son of Baron Farmer of Bishopsgate, a Tory lord. He points across the nine-story atrium, and its internal steel skeleton, to a table in the mezzanine level where his fiancée, the conservative political commentator Candace Owens, is waiting.
“There are some that say I’m responsible for introducing them,” says Farage with more raucous laughter.
His next visit stateside will be for their August wedding at the Trump Winery in Virginia. It represents a union of old and new political worlds: The son of a British conservative member of the House of Lords and the self-proclaimed Blexiteer leading a campaign to encourage African-Americans to leave the Democratic Party.
“I’m doing the toasts,” says Farage. I’m the toastmaster!”
The glitz of a society wedding is a long way from the old image of Brexiteers and Eurosceptics, he adds, who were perceived as old men “with big ears for some reason.”
He recounts a 2013 dinner party at the “Breitbart embassy,” Steve Bannon’s house on Capitol Hill, as an example of how the tide has turned.
The guests, in his not wholly plausible telling, were “an unknown guy,” “a way-out senator going nowhere” and a youngish reporter “with a niche little show.” Today Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions and Laura Ingraham are rather better known.
“They were all nobodies and have all gone on to incredible things,” says Farage. “That night sums up what has happened in the past five or six years in global politics.”
The scene in the gold-flecked hotel atrium is another reflection of how the fringe has become mainstream. Boris Johnson’s image is beamed down from the TVs as waiters buzz back and forth with $25 cocktails.
It’s the place where conservatives who want to be seen supporting the president want to be seen. Maybe Trump himself will spot their image on a social media feed or see their name when he checks occupancy lists, as he is rumored to do.
A week earlier, the movement’s standard bearers met across town at a start-up conference to discuss “national conservatism,” part of an effort to flesh out Trumpism and its philosophy. If that was work, then the Liberty gala feels like populism at play.
The fact is not lost on Farage, who is as well known for his love of a pint and a bawdy joke as his position on Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy. “The left had all the pretty girls and parties. The right were weirdo geeks,” he says. “Now the right is having fun. That’s all very positive.”
An hour or so later he gets a rock star reception as more than 800 guests welcome him on to the red and blue stage of the Liberty Gala. He delivers a neat blend of wry humour — “I can tell you a thing or two about milkshakes, I really can” — before the red meat of his final call to arm, encouraging his young listeners to take on the forces of globalism.
“If we do it liberty will win, if we do it the nation state will win, if we do it the United Kingdom will win, if we do it the United States of America will win,” he says. It brings down the house.
Then it’s off to the sidewalk for a cigarette while the party continues inside.
Rob Crilly is White House correspondent for the Washington Examiner.
